Snow White has been review bombed so much that it’s listed as one of the worst films of all time on IMDb.
The film received negative reviews, with the majority of critics highlighting lead star Rachel Zegler, 23, as one of the few positives in an otherwise weak live-action Disney remake.
But in recent weeks, the film has faced heightened vitriol, with many heavily criticising Zegler’s off-screen personality in what has been deemed a “smear campaign” against the 23-year-old West Side Story actor.
At the time of writing, the film has a score of just 1.5 out of 10 on review aggregate site IMDb, which, it’s worth noting, permits free voting for unverified users. This positions Snow White as being worse than noted turkeys including Cats, Gigli and Battlefield Earth, with 91.1 per cent of reviewers opting to rank the film one out of 10.
For comparison, Snow White fares better on Rotten Tomatoes, a site that requires user verification in order to review. Here, it has an audience score of 74 per cent, which would rank as a 7.4 out of 10 on IMDb.
The review bombing arrives months after Zegler shared pro-Palestine and anti-Donald Trump posts in the run-up to the film’s release.
When the star shared the first official Snow White trailer on X in August 2023, she thanked her fans for their support, before adding in a separate post: “And always remember, free Palestine.” It’s been reported that she refused to delete the post after being asked to by the film’s producer as well as Disney bosses.
Elsewhere, after the results of the US presidential election were declared, Zegler posted: “F*** Donald Trump” and “May Trump supporters never know peace”.
Platt reportedly pulled Zegler aside at the time and explained that she was signalling to a chunk of America that the forthcoming Disney film was not for them.
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This is not the first time a Disney project has been review bombed by trolls.
Star Wars series The Acolyte, which starred Black actor Amandla Stenberg, started off with a higher rating before being specifically targeted, causing the show to become the lowest-rated Star Wars project in the history of the franchise. Stenberg cited the “vitriolic” response to the show as the reason for Disney’s decision to cancel it months later.
According to Deadline, the 2023 live action remake of The Little Mermaid’s Moviepilot score dipped to a 0.7 out of 10 rating. IMDb put a warning on the movie’s page reading: “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title.”
Meanwhile, when the first female-led Marvel movie Captain Marvel opened in cinemas in 2019, trolls review bombed it to the extent that its Rotten Tomatoes “Want to See” score fell to 28 per cent. Rotten Tomatoes then changed their website so that audiences couldn’t submit reviews until a film or show came out.
