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What's with this recent trend of BAD MOVIES being critically acclaimed?


I'm just going to reference ones I recently saw. Doctor Sleep, The Invisible Man, and The Night House.

I consider these all to be BAD.

1. Doctor Sleep

First of all, I think this can be blamed on Stephen King. But this story had NO REASON to be connected to The Shining. Right there, this was set up for failure. The only thing that connected it to the Shining Was that the main character was the kid....That's like making the movie "The Conjuring" as a direct sequel to the Rock Films....And the way that they're connected is that the main character is Robert Balboa, Rockey's only son.... Seriously, it was that unconnected. This would have done much better if it weren't connected, but even so, it still would have been bad. Also "Rose the Hat" is awful. So contrived. So obviously written to be some kind of horror Hot Topic Icon, like the next Jack Skellington....

2. The Invisible Man

WOW. It's painful enough how bad this film was. How they chose the worst actress for the Protagonist. How I was actively routing AGAINST the protagonist because of how dumb she was. But what's more painful than all of that was that society actually liked this movie.... I just could not stand it. First of all, in every scene where she was "framed", her reaction to it made me hate her so much. Her reaction to being accused of hitting the girl made her seem like a mental patient. When she was framed for slicing her sister's throat and she just continued to hold the knife in an upright position, just so everyone in the building could be 100 percent sure that she murdered her, I was so annoyed that it took me out of the film. The original version of this movie did not even have a female lead. They could have done this with a female lead if done correctly. Like, here's a novel idea: Make sure your female lead isn't annoying, ugly, and easy to hate. I will say that women are more inclined to enjoy this film. However, the overt feminist tones are so strong that it's cringeworthy for people who aren't into that stuff--And I'm fine with there being films just for females. But how about giving me a heads up so I don't watch it? Truly a dreadful movie that got a 93% on RT...

3. The Night House

Another high budget movie with an unlikable female lead. It also has an 86% on RT. That's the same rating as The Conjuring. According to critics, this movie is as good as the Conjuring. You know what that tells me? That films critics have no idea what they're doing. Maybe I should take up a career as a film critic if they're this inept at identifying good movies. Again, no problem with female leads. But when you make them insufferable, sarcastic, and rude, they kind of make the movie a drag. I get that she just suffered a death, which excuses a lot of her behavior. But at a certain point, it becomes unbearable. Also, they made her situation really weird. She and her husband live by themselves in a lakeview mansion, and he shoots himself. And she stays in her big lonely mansion right after. Doesn't go somewhere else. Doesn't stay with family. Nope. Her husband kills himself, and she just stays in that house with no one to comfort her. Oh, and within just a few days, she's back at her teaching job. Very weird behavior. Also, they were trying to pull off the whole "strong smart independent woman who don't need no man" blah blah blah overplayed nonsense that we're tired of. Oh, also, throughout the movie there's this big buildup with clues that show the husband was a serial killer. And throughout, she finds more and more clues, setting up a big reveal...And then the big reveal ruins everything. The reveal was that her husband was murdering all these people because some supernatural entity was telling him to murder his wife. So instead he found people who looked like his wife and killed them instead. That's it. That's the whole thing. It was just bad. Anti-climatic and just really horrible.

Does anyone else see this trend of really bad movies getting critical acclaim? I do and it's really making me want to just indulge in the classics for a while...

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The first 2 are good. Never heard of the other one.

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The Night House has been recommended to me by a friend. Would love to check it out in the coming weeks.

Apparently it's a pretty decent to good horror film.

Also, I too enjoyed Doctor Sleep & the Invisible Man.

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Horror movies were always bad anyway. I never liked the genre because it's idiotic nonsense tropes they always repeating since the beginning of time.

Maybe you just don't like "Strong smart independent women who needs no men" trope which is as stupid as "There is a killer among us, let's split up!" Genius IQ 900.

But a trope is a trope and if you don't like it you don't like it.

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I like Doctor Sleep, I loathe The Invisible Man and I've never seen The Night House. That said, none of these should be considered critically acclaimed. None.

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the metacritic ratings for the films:

dr sleep 59
invisible man - 72
the night house - 68

none of them would qualify as universally or broadly acclaimed, but invisible man & night house received strong reviews.

personally, i don't think any of these films are bad, or anywhere close to being bad.

fwiw, my own opinions line up with the critics here. i was disappointed in dr sleep (i'm a big mike flanagan fan - this is one of the few things he's done that i was a bit down on), and i liked invisible man & really liked night house a lot.

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Compare the audience scores and IMDB scores for a given film to that of the critics. Metascore is usually lower than Rotten tomatoes, since RT accepts critic ratings from almost anyone, including shills.

Doctor Sleep (2019), IMDB 7.3
Rotten Tomatoes 78%, Audience 89%
Metacritic 59, Metacritic audience 71

Invisible Man (2020), IMDB 7.1
Rotten Tomatoes 92%, Audience 88%
Metacritic 72, Metacritic audience 69

The Night House (2020), IMDB 6.5
Rotten Tomatoes 86%, Audience 69%
Metacritic 68, Metacritic audience 65

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the main reason the rt score is almost always higher is that the rt score is measuring something different.

the rt score is simply the % of critics who gave the film a positive rating. i've never liked the rt method, because it really doesn't tell as much as i want to know. i guess it's fine to know whether 80% or 90% or 10% of the critics were mainly positive, but it's much more meaningful to know what they actually thought. were they just luke-warm positive, or did they really like it a lot?

if you drill down on the rt page, you can find the average critic rating, and you'll generally find it doesn't deviate much from the metacritic rating. it's never the same, because rt uses a wide array of rt verified critics, while metacritic sticks to a much smaller and somewhat more exclusive set of publications and critics.

i personally find metacritic a much more useful site, & their year end lists are much more interesting & varied than rt's.

of course, rt also has a group of select 'top critics,' and you can always filter out their opinions.

here are the various ratings for the three movies.

dr sleep.

rt % 78
rt avg critic rating 7.
rt top critic 59%
rt avg rating of top critics 6.4

the invisible man

rt% 92%
rt avg critic rating 7.7
rt top critic 84%
rt avg rating of top critics 7.2

the night house

rt% 86%
rt avg critic rating 7
rt top critics 85%
rt avg rating of top critics 7.1

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very low standards

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Misplaced critical acclaim has existed since critics came to be.

This is not new.

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Hasn't that always happened? Films get pushed forward for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the film itself.

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Look at the average rating rather than the % on RT.

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