From hot takes to celebrity “favourites”, today’s film culture taps into something deeper than reviews: the urge to be seen watching.
Most people feel compelled to review a film if it was very good- or very bad. Case in point: what if this supposedly quick side activity starts to be taken too seriously? As an opening scene of a new movie plays, phones glow in peoples’ hands: notes get drafted and star ratings begin to form before the credits have even rolled. By the time the film ends, the viewing isn’t complete – not until someone hits “post” on Letterboxd.
For a website founded in New Zealand in 2011 as a niche logbook for movie lovers or cinephiles, Letterboxd now boasts 24 million users worldwide and three billion films logged as of October 2025. Its feed, filled with capsule reviews and curated collections, has become a shorthand for belonging in modern film culture.
But when that feed momentarily collapsed on a random Wednesday at the end of last year, a unique reception invaded social media.
“Letterboxd is down, which means I can’t access my watchlist, which means I can’t watch a movie,” one X post read, accompanied by a meme of Walter White from Breaking Bad falling to his knees.
“Letterboxd is probably as big as it is because of good branding… Your top actors [have] been interviewed and asked about their top four films. That’s why it’s so big, because it’s marketed itself well,” Araya said.
On the surface, Letterboxd is manipulatively simple. An app where users can log, rate and write reviews on films they have watched. But there is something questionable about how its design publicises what was supposed to be a private record and nudges it firmly into the messy territory of social media- likes, followers, engagement and ultimately user-comparison.
The big 2026 also sees film dividing more people rather than gathering them. The upcoming Oscar Awards and the rise of unemployment surrounding the kind of demographics Letterboxd boasts – its highest group of users being between ages 18-24, enthusiastic supporters continue to credit the app with reviving excitement around the film industry.
Hype begets hype; a flurry of activity will always follow the first screening of an eagerly awaited film. The most viral review of Emerald Fennell’s controversial adaptation of Wuthering Heights “emily brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her” – has earned its own crowd of 50,000 likes. The Moment, Charli xcx’s fictional retelling of Brat summer, ended up being pitted against tabloid enemy Taylor Swift’s concert film, giving birth to this comparison review: “eras tour documentary found dead.”
And of its own accord… much more can be said with Marty Supreme reviews.
The rituals of celebrity branding and online cinephilia
“Four Favourites” was Letterboxd’s 2022 answer to the wave of novelty interview formats that emerged alongside YouTube culture in the 2010s.
As audiences watched celebrities endure awkward chicken shop dates or lie detector tests, a new ritual emerged: waiting for the four movies actors named as their favourites on the red carpet, with their taste read as a measure of relatability or film knowledge.
Take a peek at some Celebrity Four Favourites:
Cillian Murphy (2023)
Murphy captures Letterboxd’s most viral video at 1m+ likes, being one of the interviews that bolstered the popularity of Four Favourites. Among others, he notably fired off La Haine and Apocalypse Now, prefacing that he watches these films with his children. Of the two iconic films, only Apocalypse Now is rated R, but Murphy’s list became a bit of a joke among his fans, who had incorrectly assumed his children were yet to be in their teens, let alone adults.
Saoirse Ronan (2025)
Ronan is, of course, most known for her roles in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and Lady Bird, but starring in critically acclaimed, feminist coming-of-age material certainly didn’t stop her from listing non “high-brow” favourites like Bridesmaids, Dirty Dancing, and Sister Act. “I’m not gonna pick the ‘cool’ ones,” she said.
Elle Fanning (2024)
Similar to Ronan, Fanning has since been praised by fans for going the ‘authentic’ route (as opposed to other celebs many call ‘pretentious’) by listing Monsters University and There’s Something About Mary, balanced out by the cerebral 2016 sci,fi, Arrival, and Sofia Coppola’s widely loved The Virgin Suicides. She’d definitely be first in line to play as a Lisbon sister if the opportunity arose!
For Amelie Araya, President of UNSW’s Film Society, this devotion is no accident.
“Letterboxd is probably as big as it is because of good branding… Your top actors [have] been interviewed and asked about their top four films. That’s why it’s so big, because it’s marketed itself well,” Araya said.
According to Araya, that appetite for connection speaks to a broader shift in how people identify with art.
Amelie Araya, President of UNSW’s Film Society, has observed how online practices are shaping students’ viewing habits. (Source: supplied)
“I’m really big on archiving everything that I’ve experienced,” she said, having witnessed Letterboxd’s popularity among fellow students during weekly screenings.
“Maybe that’s what it is for them. This desire not just to engage in art, but to be seen engaging in art.”
The “dopamine” boost from winning likes and followers from writing a review is “painstakingly” earned. Some craft paragraph-long breakdowns while others chase the witty one-liner.
“There are people who engage in film in a way that’s very critical, and that’s a way of engaging with art that is really enjoyable to some people,” Araya said. “As long as it gets people curious about the movie, I think there’s value to that.”
But Araya is cautious about what happens when the impulse to document takes priority.
“If you’re watching a film by yourself and your main goal is logging it – you’re thinking about your review – I’ve caught myself doing that a few times and I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’” she said.
When watching becomes a performance
For some, documenting the viewing experience is simply a pastime. Adrita Islam, a 20-year-old first-year UNSW Biotechnology undergraduate with a modest Letterboxd following, falls under the throwaway-commenter archetype.
Undergraduate UNSW student Adrita Islam sees reviewing films as a mere casual hobby. Source: supplied
“I’m not big on posting intellectual reviews. That’s not me, but I do like posting funny reviews,” Islam said. “I try to find little jokes or scenes that I can talk about, so it does make me think about movies more, really think about them in a way that I used to not before.”
One-liner humour has become a defining part of online cinephilia. (Source: Letterboxd)
Still, she’s wary of what Letterboxd’s ranking culture can do to personal taste. While users can build lists around mood, genre or theme, the most divisive are those that rank films from “best” to “worst”.
Among her peers, she’s also noticed a renewed interest in “complicated and hard to understand” films like the seven-time Oscar-winning Oppenheimer.
A 2024 study on Letterboxd users suggests this shift isn’t accidental, finding that film-watching can become a form of dishonest “status-seeking” shaped by public opinion. Other scholars note that the movies young audiences mock or elevate often reflect peer pressure.
Islam sees a version of this in her own circle. “I know some people who post about movies just to be like, oh, look what I watched!” she said. “But the people who are really passionate about film, I don’t think they really care about posting.”
Beyond ratings: Finding joy in the good and bad
The Best Worst Movie Club is a place where fans of ‘awful movies’ can meet and enjoy film fare of their own accord (Image courtesy of James Brickwood, SMH)
For Nat Cheney, metrics-driven film consumption provides a narrow outlook on movie-going. As founder of Sydney’s Best Worst Movie Club, which screens famously terrible films monthly in the Inner West and Blue Mountains, she believes in dismantling the notion that only critically acclaimed cinema is worth enjoying.
“There’s a lot of emphasis and culture around films having to do really well and be really good,” Cheney said. “In life, we’re striving to be perfect, to achieve, to do well, and there’s so much pressure and stress.”
Watching “rubbish” yet “loved” films offers relief, but the peer pressure to be visibly active online persists.
“Social media platforms are the middleman between the content. There’s the film and me, and there’s everything that people are talking about. There’s hype, there’s other people’s opinions, what’s trending, what’s on topic,” Cheney said.
“I’ll talk to someone about a film and they’ll expect me to have written about it on Letterboxd,” she said. “They’re surprised if I say I haven’t.”
Moreover, discovering what to watch through platforms like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and IMDb— which Cheney prefers for a “balanced” audience-critic consensus— hinders people from finding “truly good” movies.
“There’s this [online sharing] culture where a lot of movies get talked about and that’s what people go and see… That’s what the celebrities are talking about. I would say on the scale of good to bad movies, those movies are normally in the middle, mediocre,” she said.
Online reactions capture how Letterboxd culture ties film taste to credibility and perception. (Source: YouTube and TikTok)
On top of that, the “inflammatory” nature of online content made for engagement purposes can limit exposure for small film creators.
“[There are] truly good movies that just don’t have the budget and are a million times better, yet no one’s ever seen [them],” she said.
Still a need for offline communities?
For all the noise of online cinephilia, Cheney and Araya believe something different happens when people sit through a movie together, in the flesh.
“The best part of the night [is when] we watch the film and then talk trash about it,” Cheney said. “If you’re with someone and you’re laughing about it, it’s like a shared trauma.”
To Araya, watching in person creates a kind of “social contract” to stay with a film until the end. “I almost think it’s easier to be honest in person than it is to be online sometimes, because you’re engaging in a dialogue with someone,” she said.
“Hopefully people aren’t losing sight of the fact that they are spending their limited time on Earth watching a movie [and] thinking about how it will impact the way they’re perceived by others,” Araya said.
Top 3 best-worst films to watch for a good time:
If your idea of a perfect screening involves chaos, laughter and collective disbelief, Sydney’s Best Worst Movie Club founder Nat Cheney offers three recommendations:
- Double Down (2005)
2. Troll 2 (1990)
