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Does Review Bombing Actually Hurt Movies, TV Shows And Video Games?

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Does Review Bombing Actually Hurt Movies, TV Shows And Video Games?

In this age of culture wars over various entertainment properties, fans have limited options in making their voices heard. There’s complaining on social media, but there are also the high-profile review sites and services that act as recommendation engines for content.

The New York Times recently published an article about how review bombing on a place like Goodreads harms authors by creating bad buzz, whether or not the reviewers in question have read the book. One book was accused of being “anti-black,” and that social media narrative translated into loads of one-star reviews on Goodreads which directly hurt the novel.

In the wider entertainment industry it’s a bit different, and review bombing is used with such frequency, it’s almost become easy to ignore it most of the time, with a few exceptions. And it works differently across movies, TV shows and video games.

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Movies – The end-all be-all for movie reviews is Rotten Tomatoes, which takes into account purely whether a review is positive or negative, and uses that to create a “fresh” or “rotten” rating, with rotten anything below a 60%.

At one point, the issue of review bombing got so bad that Rotten Tomatoes introduced a verification system to prove you’d actually bought a ticket to see a particular film. This was instituted after so-called fans review bombed the MCU’s Captain Marvel with ferocity in response to comments lead actress Brie Larson had made about the movie press being too male-dominated. It remains the lowest fan-scored Marvel movie at a 45%, but after that, we saw fewer extremes for movies like this. And it did not prevent Captain Marvel from making $1.1 billion at the worldwide box office and spawning a sequel out in a few months.

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For movies, there’s also a narrative that critics are disconnected from fans and hate big flashy blockbusters, so it’s the user scores you have to listen to. That doesn’t reflect reality. The glut of superhero movies actually showcase that in many instances, critics score these types of movies higher than fans, and least in the MCU.

But often it’s the case that critic or fan reviews just don’t matter, or at the very least, it’s unpredictable. DC’s The Suicide Squad scored a 90% with critics and an 82% from fans, but was a box office failure in part because general audiences thought it was going to be a bad sequel to a bad original with a close to identical name. No one really cared about the positive scores. Top Gun Maverick, meanwhile, with its 96% critical rating and 99% audience score, reflected the hugely positive word of mouth that had the recognizable IP and its huge star make that a rare, non-superhero box office smash. But again, sometimes all the positive fan reviews in the world do nothing. Shazam! Fury of the Gods had an 86% score from fans, but was one of the biggest superhero flops ever. There, the middling critic reviews (a 47%) were correct.

TV – Again, even with TV shows and movies on Metacritic, it’s Rotten Tomatoes that people pay attention to here, though probably less so for TV than movies. There are generally fewer TV critics than movie critics (which makes little sense in this day and age), and scores very much skew higher for shows, so much so that they’re almost always higher for critics than fans.

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Review bombing is probably a larger problem with TV, given that unlike movies, there is no verification system for who has watched a show or not. Again, this comes up most often in superhero, sci-fi or fantasy series where fanboys have the most opinions. Marvel’s She-Hulk had an 80% critic score but a 32% audience score mainly based on its “goofy” tone and female-focused narrative examining misogyny in many episodes. We don’t know if it will get a second season or not yet. We can also see this on IMDB with their helpful graphics that often show lots of perfect 10s opposite 1 star reviews as warring camps try to control the narrative over something like Ms. Marvel (seen above).

Absolutely terrible reviews can help sink a series. Netflix’s Resident Evil series made it to #1 on the service, but a 26% audience score, one of Netflix’s lowest ever, certainly didn’t help the argument to renew it, and it was promptly cancelled. But here we have to debate what the definition of “review bombing” even is, given that sometimes a show is just…bad, and the reviews reflect that.

In the streaming era, reviews often simply do not matter at all, and it comes down mainly to watch time and budget, especially on places like Netflix. That can lead to some seemingly baffling decisions, like Netflix cancelling a series like Teenage Bounty Hunters with a 94% critic score and 96% audience score simply because it wasn’t watched enough. The 99% rated Tuca and Bertie was cancelled and had to be picked up by another network. If you make your way through Netflix’s most popular shows ever, almost all of them are somewhere between a 75% and 85% fan rating, with critic scores being all over the place (95% for Squid Game, 71% for Wednesday, 57% for Dahmer, all megahits). Here, all forms of reviews probably matter the least.

Video Games – Now we arrive at the place where fan-based review bombing happens the most often, but is probably the most ignored at this point. Unlike the previous two fields, the video game industry is home to warring factions in the console wars, or extremely reactive fans who respond to technical issues or general game problems with ultra-low scores.

But what happens is that this occurs so often, most people have grown content to ignore user reviews on Metacritic at this point (there are no video game reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for whatever reason). What frequently happens is some new console-exclusive release will come out, and the other side tries to sink it with poor scores without playing it (this recently happened initially with PlayStation-exclusive Final Fantasy XVI, and has happened with Xbox games too). Metacritic does not “verify” user reviews, they simply put a delay on being able to score games until they are out for a day or two, but it does little to deter the practice.

Probably more so than Rotten Tomatoes, and as much as fans would like to say otherwise, it’s the high and low scores by professional critics which make the most impact. Video game studios have been actually offered bonuses at times for 85+ Metascores, and usually anything over 90+ is a Game of the Year contender and will sell extremely well. Two of the highest scoring games in recent memory, Tears of the Kingdom and Elden Ring, set sales records for their respective studios/franchises. Two of the lowest scoring big games, Redfall and Saints Row, were sales disasters. But this has everything to do with critic reviews and almost nothing to do with any kind of review bombing.

A possible exception to this is Steam on PC, where users do have to own a game to rate it, though this mainly affects smaller games rather than large ones in terms of how that might impact sales. One interesting thing about Steam is how reviews can tell you the trajectory of a game over time. Something like Cyberpunk 2077 was thrashed at launch with poor reviews due to its buggy nature and missing features, but over time, recent reviews skewed more and more positive as fixes came in, and you can see that with Steam’s tracking of the most recent positive/negative scores.

Generally speaking, the answer is no, low fan scores or outright review-bombing rarely affects the final outcome of bigger movies, TV shows or video games. Movies succeed or fail for many different reasons. TV shows are mainly considered successes free of critic or fan scores largely based on pure watch time and budgets relative to that watch time. Video games put enormously heavy weight on critic scores while user scores are largely ignored completely, depending on the situation. It’s not exactly the Goodreads situation elsewhere in the entertainment industry.

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Movie Reviews

A Real Encounter Movie Review: The blurry line between truth and propaganda leaves much to be desired

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A Real Encounter Movie Review: The blurry line between truth and propaganda leaves much to be desired
Story: A college student gets caught up in a terrorist attack and is killed in a police encounter. Was an innocent soul slain, or is there more than meets the eye?

Review: A Real Encounter attempts to intertwine real-life inspiration with a fictional narrative, drawing from Gujarat’s controversial anti-terrorism operations in 2002. The film centers around a dramatic encounter in which four terrorists are killed, including Muskan (Bratuti Ganguly), a seemingly innocent college student from Mumbai. The plot raises the pivotal question: Was Muskan an innocent victim of the circumstance, or was she unknowingly or willingly caught up in a terrorist plot?

The film’s premise is intriguing, exploring the blurry line between truth and propaganda surrounding police encounters that often remain shrouded in controversy. The central question about Muskan’s involvement—and whether she was a manipulated pawn, or complicit in the terror plot—has the potential for a nuanced exploration of the socio-political climate of the time. However, the execution leaves much to be desired.

While the film’s first half focuses on the intense police encounters, the second half shifts to a more personal, character-driven narrative about Muskan’s gradual descent into radicalism. This shift feels awkward and unconvincing, as the pacing becomes disjointed and struggles to maintain emotional engagement. There is little exploration into Muskan’s motivations or the external forces that may have shaped her decisions. A more thorough examination of her character and the socio-political pressures of the time could have made the film more impactful.

Sabir Shaikh’s direction lacks the necessary polish to carry the weight of the narrative. There is an overuse of close-up shots and shaky camera work that undermines the intensity of key action sequences. The poorly choreographed gunfights and lack of realism further detract from the dramatic tension. Additionally, abrupt jump cuts between scenes disrupt the flow, creating a disjointed viewing experience. The background score is another problem—loud and intrusive, it often clashes with the mood of the scenes, further intensifying the discomfort of watching.

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Bratuti Ganguly, in her debut role as Muskan, delivers a competent performance but struggles to fully embody her character due to an underdeveloped script. The police officers—Ehsaan Khan (ADG Rathore), Shahbaaz Khan (Arjun Ranade), and Rishikesh Tiwari (Varun Barot)—are convincing but are constrained by their lack of complexity. Even Waseem (Akhilesh Verma), who befriends Muskan and plays a key role in her involvement with terrorism, follows a predictable character arc that lacks intrigue.

Supporting characters like Muskan’s uncle (Mushtaq Khan) and Raza Murad (the advocate seeking justice) are left underdeveloped, overshadowed by the film’s uneven pacing. Their presence feels more like an afterthought than integral parts of the narrative.

In conclusion, A Real Encounter is a missed opportunity. While the concept could have made for a thought-provoking and gripping film, the lack of cohesive storytelling, shaky cinematography, and overblown background score detract from its potential. This is definitely not the film you want to encounter this weekend.

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Movie Reviews

Kanguva Movie Review – Gulte

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Kanguva Movie Review – Gulte

2/5


02 Hrs 34 Mins   |   Action Adventure – Fantasy   |   14-11-2024


Cast – Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani, Yogi Babu, Anandaraj, Kovai Sarala, Redin Kingsley, Natarajan Subramaniam & others.

Director – ‘Siruthai’ Siva

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Producer – K. E. Gnanavel Raja, V. Vamsi Krishna Reddy & Pramod Uppalapati

Banner – Studio Green & UV Creations

Music – Devi Sri Prasad

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It’s been about two and a half years since Suriya’s film in a lead role was released in theatres. In an attempt to deliver an out-of-the-world experience to the audience, he teamed up with director, ‘Siruthai’ Siva for Kanguva, an action-adventure fantasy film with a period backdrop. It’s been a while since Suriya delivered a hit at the Box Office and he has pinned all his hopes on the film. After raising expectations with the teaser, and trailer, especially the release trailer which was released a few days back, Kanguva, was finally released in theatres today. Did it live up to the expectations? Did the director, Siva, come up with a memorable film for the fans of Suriya and movie lovers? Let’s figure it out with a detailed analysis.

What is it about?

Francis(Suriya), is a bounty hunter based out of Goa along with his Ex-Girlfriend, Angela(Disha Patani) and friend(Yogi Babu) During a bounty hunting job, Francis and his friend meet a kid(Zeta) who is on a run. Both Francis & Zeta find a strange connection between themselves. What is the connection between Francis and Zeta? Why is Zeta on a run? Who is Kanguva & Poruva? What is their connection with Francis and Zeta? Forms the rest of the story.

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Performances:

Suriya as Francis Theodore looked a bit out of the place but he did well in the role of Kanga aka Kanguva. The way he used his eyes to perform in the role of Kanguva is fantastic. Disha Patani as Angela is wasted. All the sequences involving her are irritating.

Bobby Deol as Udhiran got a poorly written role with a very weird look and there’s not much to talk about his role. The child artist who did the roles of Poruva & Zeta did well. There’s a surprise cameo during the climax of the film by a ‘Most Loved Star’ but even the cameo did not work out. The cameo is used in the film just to give a lead to the second part.

Yogi Babu, Kovai Sarala and a few more notable actors are wasted in poorly written roles. Probably for the first time in the recent past, Yogi Babu’s comedy failed to evoke laughs.

Technicalities:

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Vetri Palaniswamy’s cinematography is first-rate. The way he captured the lush green forests and the way he and his team shot the film during the night is fantastic. Cinematography is the only department that gave their hundred percent to the film. Devi Sri Prasad was disappointed big time with poor songs and a soulless & loud background score. Apart from the ‘Mannippu’ song and the background score during a sequence in the second half, his work is below par and works against the film. Nishad Yusuf’s editing is poor as well. His fast cuts especially in the first half were a pain to the eyes. There’s a lot of VFX used in the film but it is strictly average at best. Production values by Studio Green and UV Creations are grand but the producers would have invested a bit more to fine-tune the VFX part.

Director, Siva selected a very good core point but his lack of experience in executing a film of Kanguva’s scale and his tendency to overdo drama worked against the film big time. He and his writers would have come up with better writing. All we get to see in the film is one action sequence after another without a soul and emotional connection. His work overall is below par.

Thumbs Up:

Two blocks each in both halves
Suriya’s performance as Kanguva
Core Plot of The Film

Thumbs Down:

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DSP’s Songs & Background Score
Weird Looks of Actors
Entire Goa Episode In The First Half
Lack of Emotional Connect In The First Half
Over-the-top drama

Analysis:

Since the release of Baahubali, many filmmakers across the country from multiple film industries have come up with ambitious films that are mounted on a huge canvas & interesting storylines to cater to the PAN India audiences but only a very few of those films worked out. Staying away from an overdose of local flavour is the basic rule that a PAN India filmmaker has to follow but unfortunately most of these filmmakers, especially the Tamil filmmakers inability to stay away from overdoing the local flavour is working against these PAN India films more often than not.

Kanguva has a very interesting plot and a setup that may have been very exciting on paper but the director, Siva and his team’s execution is loud, predictable and filled with an overdose of native flavour. Every actor in the film shouts and screams all the time for no reason. Along with the over-the-top execution and acting by almost all the actors, the weird looks designed for each of the actors, especially when the plot was set up in the year 1070, worked against the film.

The film starts on an interesting note with a monologue by an old woman in the year 1070 that questions the true purpose of each of us human beings’ birth, followed by another interesting sequence involving a kid named, Zeta at a lab in 2024. But, what follows after these two sequences in the first half is a mess filled with people screaming all the time and very predictable pre-interval sequences.

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The second half of the film is marginally better compared to the first half with a couple of well-executed blocks but again, apart from those couple of blocks, remaining everything is unexciting. Also, the sequences Suriya, Disha Patani, Yogi Babu and others in the first half in the backdrop of Goa are forgettable. All those sequences are executed very poorly and test the patience of the audience.

It is the director who is to be blamed for wasting the potential of a very interesting plot with below-par execution barring four blocks. Another culprit is Devi Sri Prasad. Both his songs and background score are forgettable, to say the least.

Overall, Kanguva has an interesting plot but the below-par execution made it a disappointing film that may find it difficult to sustain at the Box Office. There’s a lead given during the climax of the film using a surprise cameo by a star hero for the second part but it is highly unlikely that the second part of the film will be made.

Verdict – Too Loud & Over-The-Top

Rating: 2/5

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'Heretic' Review – A Rube Goldberg Machine Dripping With Theological Boredom

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'Heretic' Review – A Rube Goldberg Machine Dripping With Theological Boredom

Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed in the psychological horror film Heretic. Photo credit: Kimberley French. Image property of A24.

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Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (65, Haunt, writers of A Quiet Place), Heretic is a so-called psychological horror that is disappointing on all fronts. After only seeing the trailer once months ago, I initially thought that Heretic was a film about a serial killer (Hugh Grant) who used his crazy mouse trap-contraption house to lure in religious, door-to-door service people and kill them.

While that is partially the case, Heretic follows two missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher, The Book of Boba Fett) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East, The Wolf of Snow Hollow). The two women go to the house of Mr. Reed (Grant) who has expressed interest in hearing more about their religion.

(L-R) Chloe East as Sister Paxton and Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes in the psychological horror film Heretic (2024), A24

As Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton make their way inside, they soon find themselves trapped in Mr. Reed’s bizarrely intricate home featuring electricity on a timer, a front door that supposedly won’t open again until morning, and metal construction that blocks cell phone signals.

Reed, a theology major with vast knowledge of all religions, claims to have found the one true religion. Whether the two women will escape or if Reed knows what he’s talking about all factors into the cerebral aspect of the film.

(L-R) Chloe East as Sister Paxton, Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes, and Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed in the psychological horror film Heretic (2024), A24

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Martin Freeman constantly looked miserable and bored out of his mind when he appeared in films like The Hobbit trilogy and the Sherlock TV series. He suddenly looked like he was having the time of his life when he shifted film genres, plunged into horror, and starred in the 2017 film Ghost Stories.

It seems to be the same case for Hugh Grant. While this isn’t his first horror film, Heretic is his first film in the genre in 36 years (Grant starred in The Lair of the White Worm in 1988). Grant is noticeably lively in his performance in Heretic though and seems downright giddy to be torturing people.

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With cinematography by Chung Chung-hoon (Last Night in Soho, The Handmaiden), Heretic has two visually memorable sequences thanks to how they’re shot. When Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton first arrive, Mr. Reed leaves the room to check on his “wife.” While he’s gone, Barnes turns the candle he blew out and discovers what the scent of the candle is. As she slowly turns the candle, the camera turns with it.

Reed has a miniature duplicate of his house complete with little figures that represent Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton. In a sequence when Sister Paxton is trying to run away from Mr. Reed, we’re following her movements in the miniature but it seamlessly transitions from the model to the real thing when she enters the room and slams the door.

Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes in the psychological horror film Heretic (2024), A24

RELATED: ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ Review – Striking Animation That Plays It Safe

The method in which Heretic is written is somewhat odd. Not quite horrific enough to be scary with its religion-defying dialogue taking center stage, Heretic is essentially a two-hour sermon attempting to destroy your faith with some splashes of blood and a raggedy woman or two dying in a blueberry pie.  

It feels like if you walked into Heretic devoted to the Mormon religion, you’ll walk out of the theater a different person. Mr. Reed’s arguments regarding all religions stemming from the same concept are portrayed in a way that is believable and convincing.

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Chloe East as Sister Paxton in the psychological horror film Heretic (2024), A24

He somehow rambles about Monopoly and board games, music, and vinyl records to demonstrate similarities between certain board games, how some songs are essentially the same tunes with different lyrics, and that all religions are more similar than dissimilar.

While the dialogue-driven film can be interesting, it’s also rather boring. There’s an unsettling aspect to Mr. Reed’s behavior that capitalizes on the tension in the film. But there are also these long stretches where nothing happens besides the next topic of conversation or a weak payoff where someone’s throat is cut with a box cutter or it builds up to a whisper.

Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed in the psychological horror film Heretic (2024), A24

Heretic is beautifully shot with a stellar performance from Hugh Grant, but its intriguing concept is drowned out by the desire to deconvert the audience and have a lukewarm reveal regarding whatever the one-true religion is. Watching the film is like being trapped in a church of a religion you don’t believe in with an overwhelmingly passionate pastor trying to dissuade you from ever coming back.

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Heretic (2024), A24.

PROS

  • Hugh Grant
  • Well thought out dialogue
  • Strong writing

CONS

  • Talks the audience to death
  • Horror aspect feels secondary
  • Gets dull during final act

Mentioned This Article: A24 Heretic Horror Hugh Grant Movie Review psychological

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