Hello, well it’s looking like another slow day for releases so I thought I’d take a little look at a topic some of you fellow film fans might be interested in…

IMDb  has been ‘the’ place to find information about films on the Internet pretty much since the start of this century.  With it’s user generated ratings system its an easy way to find out if a new film is worth watching, however like any user generated rating system it can be misused and manipulated.  Here’s a quick guide to spotting fake reviews written by the production companies trying to trick you into watching their bad films…

1. “I was lucky enough to see a sneak preview of this film at…” –   Sure some people do get to see sneak previews of films, and some even consider themselves lucky, but more often than not this phrase is used by people writing fake positive reviews before the film is released.  if this phrase is followed by  a glowing , gushing praise packed review you can bet its by an employee of the studio.
2. When they claim to know the director - Well they probably do, they were probably emailed by him last night asking them to please go on IMDb and  write something good about his film… probably
3. The review is full of praise and the reviewer is from LA -  I’m not saying everyone in California has an ulterior  motive for giving a crap film a blinding review …. just most of them.
4. Rating of 9/10 with 22 votes – You’d have to be pretty sad to watch your own film or a film you helped produce then give it 9-10 out of 10 onIMDb right?  right, but they still do it.   Such a high rating for a film that almost noone has seen is a very unlikely thing to happen if the people rating it are unbiased. So guess what, they are probably biased.

Once you start noticing the clues it can be quite fun spotting these fake reviews, its also fun sometimes reading the reviews of disgruntled ex employees who obviously have resentment for the film makers like in this example here (looks like it got taken down but I linked the response instead) taken from the reviews of the film Delgo which we covered the other day.  Anyway have fun spotting these false reviews and remember don’t believe everything you read on the Internets!