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You say only men can be Ghostbusters? I ain't afraid of no trolls

 
Kate McKinnon, from left, Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy star in Ghostbusters.
Kate McKinnon, from left, Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy star in Ghostbusters.
Published July 13, 2016

As of this writing, the IMDb rating for Ghostbusters is sitting at 3.7/10. More than 6,500 users have weighed in on the movie, which is interesting considering it doesn't open until Thursday. The comedy has only screened for critics in select cities and yet thousands of people have apparently seen the action comedy and flocked to IMDb to let their voices be heard.

And those voices have settled on an extremely low rating. It's not exactly Baby Geniuses 2 territory, but it's especially dismal compared with Paul Feig's other comedic collaborations with Melissa McCarthy, like The Heat (6.6), Spy (7.1) and Bridesmaids (6.8).

Of course, Ghostbusters isn't just any action comedy. It's the action comedy that whiny trolls claim they hate because it's bad, rather than because it stars women. But let's play along and assume the IMDb hate isn't about sexism. Let's just look at the numbers, admittedly fishy.

Of the 6,654 voters, 3,842, or 57.7 percent, gave the movie one star. A vast majority of the reviewers are men: 4,268, compared with 509 female voters. And the disparity between the way men and women vote is interesting. For example, in the demographic of users aged 18 to 29, 1,669 men averaged a 3.1 rating, while 243 women averaged 7.1. Even a stereotypically female-centric movie like Pride & Prejudice or 27 Dresses doesn't have that kind of stark divide.

It's also worth looking at the top 1,000 voters — basically IMDb's power users. Those voters, though always a small group, tend to vote pretty close to the overall average, although they're also usually tougher on movies. With Finding Dory, for example, 80 top-1,000 voters averaged 7.8 while the overall rating was 7.9. To go back to the horrifyingly awful Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, 206 top-1,000ers gave the movie 1.6, compared to an overall average of 1.9. For a bigger gap, see Batman v Superman, which the top 1,000 awarded 5.8 compared with a 7 average.

With Ghostbusters, only 21 of the top 1,000 have seen and voted on the movie (because, well, the movie hasn't come out yet!), but they average a score of 5.1.

In other words, the campaign to force Ghostbusters to tank — which started with an epic turnout to downvote the movie's trailer on YouTube — has continued apace. Why people spend so much time trolling a new release, rather than just opting not to see it, is anyone's guess.

This looks a lot like a coordinated campaign, though counter-attacks are making it look like a bigger issue than it is. A Reddit user who has written pro-Ghostbusters opinions in the past posed as a hater, beginning a thread with: "OK, so obviously the reviews aren't as bad as we had hoped. So what more can we do at this point to make sure that the public knows it's terrible so that it bombs?" The media bought it.

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Meanwhile, the picture looks less bleak for Ghostbusters in the critical realm. With 74 reviews in so far, 56 — or 76 percent — have been positive. It's a rare day that studios appreciate the positivity of critics. So maybe Ghostbusters isn't so bad. But don't bother telling that to the conspiracy theorists: The new story is that Sony must have paid off critics. So much for logic.

—Washington Post