How ratings are counted

We publish ratings by release day so you can see how a film's score changes once the first-day crowd has passed. Here is exactly how the numbers are made.

What you can rate

Anyone can give a film a score from 1 to 10 and answer a few short questions, with or without an account. We do not publish names next to ratings.

Verified and unverified ratings

Every rating is one of two kinds, and we show them separately so you can compare them.

• Verified (the score on a shield): given by a member who confirmed their email address and was logged in when rating. A member can rate each film once, and the rating is linked to their account. Nobody else can see whose rating it is.
• Unverified (the plain round score): given without logging in. Nothing links it to a person. It is checked only by the device and network limits below.

Verified does not mean the person watched the film. We do not check tickets, and watch-day answers are from memory. It means a real confirmed email stands behind the rating, which makes repeat voting harder than clearing cookies. The overall audience score counts both kinds together. Each kind needs at least 30 ratings before its own average is shown.

One rating per device or account

Members can rate a film once per account. For everyone else, to stop the same person voting many times we do three things:

• Each device gets a random ID in a cookie. It is stored in scrambled form, and only one rating per film is allowed per ID.
• A network address can send at most 3 ratings per film per day, so people on shared mobile connections can still rate. Addresses are stored scrambled and erased after 7 days.
• A Cloudflare Turnstile check blocks most automated voting.

These checks are not perfect. Someone who clears cookies and changes network can rate again. That is why we review unusual activity (below) and why we show how many ratings stand behind every number.

Which day a rating belongs to

The main day-by-day chart uses the day the rating was submitted. The site records that itself, so it cannot be changed by the person rating. Day 1 is the release date. Ratings submitted before release, from premieres and paid previews, are shown as "Preview".

We also ask which day people watched the film. That answer is from memory and is not checked, so it is shown separately and labelled self-reported.

Fans and everyone else

Each rater says whether they are a fan of the lead actor or the director, neutral, or not a fan. Fans tend to watch early and rate higher. Showing the groups separately lets you see how much of a film's early score comes from the fan rush. These labels are self-described.

Small numbers are hidden

We do not show an average built from fewer than 30 ratings. This applies to the overall score and to every day, group and answer. Counts are shown so you can see how large each group is.

Extremes

"9 to 10" is the share of ratings that are 9 or 10. "1 to 3" is the share that are 3 or lower. Large swings in these between days often point to a fan rush or a review-bombing attempt.

Checking for gaming

Ratings that look wrong are held back and reviewed by a person before they count. For example, a release-day rating sent before any show could have finished. Sudden bursts of near-identical ratings are also reviewed. Held-back ratings are not part of the published numbers until reviewed. We do not remove ratings because they are high, low, or inconvenient to anyone.

Independence

Nobody can pay us to change, delay, hide or remove ratings. Studios, producers, distributors, advertisers and sponsors have no say over any score or chart. If we ever sell reports or run sponsored content, it is labelled and kept apart from ratings.

Ratings from other platforms

Where we show scores from BookMyShow or District, we show them exactly as the platform publishes them, on that platform's own scale, with the time we recorded them. We never blend them with ours. Booking buttons go to the platform's own website. If we ever earn money from those links, we will say so on this page.

What these numbers are not

They are ratings from people who chose to rate on this site. They do not represent all viewers, and early on they lean towards people who follow films closely. Read them as "what raters here said", not "what the audience thinks".