2 Messages

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82 Points

Thursday, October 8th, 2026

In Progress

Possible to remove bogus star ratings on my film?

My film 'Once Upon a Time in Suffolk' was released on September 4th 2026 and has been screened in a small number of cinemas in the county of Suffolk in the UK. As the title suggests, it is a film with a very regional flavour and had a lot of regional community involvement and therefore strong local interest. As independent filmmakers and self-distributors, we put a lot of effort and endeavour into marketing and promotion for the screenings, and as a result enjjoyed several sold-out theatres (150+ audiences). We did introductions and Q&As at most of them and were encouraging people to review the film here on IMDb afterwards, to build up a bit of momentum for a wider release and/or festivals push. We had a lot of very positive feedback from audiences and that has led to some very positive star ratings and reviews.

Unfortunately, IMDb trolls can't seem to abide this kind of thing and we have sincve received a lot of 1-star ratings as these people go on their crusade to try and re-dress the balance, refusing to believe that here could (or should) be such an amount of goodwill to a regional independent film.

My question is whether it is possible to dispute these 1-star reviews and/or somehow remove ones that are so obviously fake. Given that the film has so far had less than a dozen public screenings, and all have been within East Anglia in the UK, it could/should be easy enough to remove any ratings from people with, for example, US ip addresses. Is this possible?

It would be a shame if the idiocy of rogue users helps to crush the spirit of an independent regional film such as ours which has, undoubtedly, been received very well by pretty much everyone who has Actually Seen It.

Many thanks for reading.

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Selected Oldest First

388 Messages

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8K Points

17 hours ago

Just a fyi while we await the answer from IMDb

According to

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27413743/ratings/

the "Unweighted mean" is 4.4  and the IMDb rating is 5.5, so they have apparently taken action on some of the spam.

IMDb | Helphttps://help.imdb.com/article/imdb/track-movies-tv/weighted-average-ratings/GWT2DSBYVT2F25SK?ref_=helpsrall_imdb_2#

I don't know if i'm reading this right, but if I Click on "United Kingdom"

it shows IMDb score 4.1, and 4.6 on "Unweighted mean",

and 48 votes.

So this means 2 people outside UK voted, and those two voted 1, 

(if you click on UK it says 8 people voted 1, but without uk clicked , it says 10 votes on number 1.)

388 Messages

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8K Points

PS:  When I write "outside UK", I don't know if IMDb counts country as the country the IMDb account is set to, or if it's the country the person actually are in at the time.

If I travel/move to England, I'm guessing my acount would still be sett to my country until I change it, but my internet connection would be in England.

And I don't know who is "counted" in the Country Voting Overwiev. 

2 Messages

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82 Points

Thank you Kristin - I didn't realise / think to look at filters on the Star ratings. So I guess I was being presumptive to assume the trolls came from outside the UK! :)

I also supposed there could have been some people that saw it in the cinema screenings and thought it was worthy of 1 star, but honestly I'd be very surprised. Catching something at home and hating it is quite different to actively choosing to go to see something in the cinema, especially something as niche and idiosyncratic as our film is to the region.

Maybe I just have to grin and bear it, I just know that this rating bombing does go on, and it just seems a shame that people choose to do it.

Employee

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9.3K Messages

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97.5K Points

@NickWoolgar​ - Hi, 

Thank yo for posting the link!

We have reviewed this title and can confirm the weighted rating is displaying as intended. We have several safeguards in place to automatically detect and defeat vote manipulation. When unusual voting activity is detected, a different weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system. To ensure our rating mechanism remains effective, we don't disclose the exact method used to generate the rating. 

For more information on our abuse detection methods, or details about IMDb ratings and weighted averages, please refer to our Ratings FAQ.

Cheers!

388 Messages

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8K Points

@Maya​ 

Hello Maya.

I looked at the link you provided in your answer.

It says:

"Do my ratings count toward the aggregate rating for a series or movie?

Yes, your ratings are factored into the aggregate once you have verified your account. To check if your account is verified, if you're on a desktop computer, go to "Your profile" page. If you have not verified your account you will see a "Please validate your account" banner at the top of the page and "! Validate your account" in the Profile Checklist on the right of the page."

Am I blind or is there no "Profile Checklist" at "your profile" page? 

Employee

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9.3K Messages

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97.5K Points

@Kristin​ - Hi, 

Yes, the "Profile Checklist" is no visible. We are further consulting with the respective team if this will only display when the account has not been verified.