What Is the IMDb Rating for Poor Things

Poor Things, the 2023 film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, holds an IMDb rating of 7.8 out of 10. This score places the film well above the platform’s median rating and reflects strong audience appreciation for the surreal romantic drama.

The 7.8 rating indicates that the majority of IMDb users who voted found the film to be quite good, though not universally perfect—a nuanced endorsement that accurately captures the film’s ambitious and divisive artistic approach. The film’s 7.8 IMDb rating becomes more meaningful when you understand what that number represents.

IMDb’s rating system draws from millions of user votes weighted by a complex algorithm that accounts for vote distribution and user activity history.

A 7.8 rating suggests that viewers found Poor Things to be a well-crafted, engaging film worth watching, despite its unconventional narrative and visual style. This places it firmly in the territory of “critically and audience-regarded cinema” rather than mainstream crowd-pleaser status. The context of Poor Things’ rating matters significantly.

The film is a genre-bending work that blends comedy, drama, and romance in ways that don’t fit traditional Hollywood structures. Its 7.8 rating reflects viewers who appreciate experimental filmmaking and are willing to engage with challenging material.

For comparison, the film exceeded typical ratings for avant-garde cinema, suggesting Lanthimos successfully bridged the gap between artistic innovation and audience accessibility.

Table of Contents

• How Poor Things’ 7.8 Rating Compares to Other Acclaimed Films
• Critical Acclaim Versus the IMDb Audience Rating
• Emma Stone’s Award-Winning Performance and Its Impact on the Rating
• How IMDb Ratings Are Calculated and Why Poor Things’ Score Matters
• Rating Biases and Limitations You Should Know About
• Using the Rating Alongside Plot and Director Information
• The Lasting Impact of Poor Things’ Critical and Audience Reception
• Conclusion

How Poor Things’ 7.8 Rating Compares to Other Acclaimed Films

The 7.8 imdb rating for Poor Things places it in a respectable position within the landscape of contemporary cinema.

To put this in perspective, films rated 7.5 to 8.0 typically represent the sweet spot where critical acclaim meets broad audience appreciation.

Films like The Grand Budapest Hotel (8.1), Parasite (8.6), and Arrival (7.9) occupy similar ratings, suggesting Poor Things belongs in a category of well-regarded films that expand their respective genres rather than conform to them. This rating is particularly notable because it reflects audience votes rather than critic reviews alone.

Many experimental or art-house films struggle to achieve ratings above 7.0 on IMDb because general audiences may find them inaccessible or alienating.

The fact that Poor Things reached 7.8 indicates that Lanthimos’ vision, while unconventional, resonated with a substantial portion of the viewing public. The film managed to attract both the cinephile audience and general moviegoers who appreciate quality storytelling, even when that storytelling defies convention.

One limitation to consider is that IMDb ratings skew toward users who are actively engaged with the platform. Casual viewers who watch films and never visit IMDb are not represented in this score. This can result in ratings that are somewhat higher than what a truly random sampling of all viewers would produce.

However, for a film like Poor Things, this bias likely works in its favor, since engaged cinephiles are more likely to appreciate its artistic merit.

Critical Acclaim Versus the IMDb Audience Rating

While Poor Things earned a 7.8 from IMDb audiences, critics have been significantly more enthusiastic. The film holds a 93% on rotten Tomatoes, indicating near-universal critical praise.

This gap between the critical score and the audience rating reveals something important about the film: it’s one that resonates strongly with professional reviewers and film critics, but generates more variable responses among general audiences. The 15-point difference suggests that critics valued Poor Things’ innovation and execution more uniformly than the broader audience did.

This discrepancy is not unusual for films that prioritize artistic ambition. Critics tend to reward innovation, technical mastery, and original vision—all of which Poor Things demonstrates in abundance. General audiences, by contrast, are more likely to prioritize factors like emotional connection, narrative clarity, and entertainment value in the traditional sense.

Some viewers rated Poor Things lower because they found its surrealist approach alienating or its pacing unconventional. Others loved precisely those elements. The 7.8 rating represents the average of these varied responses.

A critical limitation of comparing ratings across platforms is that different user bases approach films differently. Rotten Tomatoes critics are trained professionals assessing films within an established critical framework. IMDb users include casual viewers watching on a Friday night.

Neither perspective is inherently more valid, but they measure different things. For Poor Things, the higher critical score accurately reflects that professional film critics recognized the film as a significant artistic achievement, while the slightly more modest IMDb score indicates that general audiences appreciated it without achieving the same level of universal enthusiasm.

Emma Stone’s Award-Winning Performance and Its Impact on the Rating

Emma Stone’s portrayal of Bella Baxter in Poor Things played a substantial role in elevating the film’s rating. Her performance was so acclaimed that she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama, and the British Academy Film Award for Best Actress.

These major awards validated what many viewers had already decided: that Stone delivered a remarkable performance that anchored the entire film.

When a lead performance receives this level of recognition, it typically boosts a film’s overall rating because audiences credit the actor with bringing depth and humanity to the material.

Stone’s performance was particularly impressive because she brought emotional authenticity to a character who exists in a deliberately artificial and heightened world. Bella Baxter is a reanimated woman navigating existence for the first time, and Stone managed to convey both the character’s naïveté and her emerging complexity.

This balance is difficult to achieve, and her success in doing so gave audiences an emotional anchor in an otherwise experimental film. The recognition from major award bodies signaled to potential viewers that this was serious acting in a serious film, which likely contributed to the 7.8 rating being as high as it is.

The award recognition also created a feedback loop. As Stone’s wins accumulated, more people became interested in watching the film to see what all the acclaim was about. This expanded the viewing audience beyond typical art-house cinema attendees, bringing in viewers who might not otherwise have watched a surrealist romantic drama.

These additional viewers then contributed to the IMDb rating, and many of them presumably rated the film positively, influenced by the prestige surrounding Stone’s performance.

However, one limitation worth noting is that not every viewer will respond equally to award-winning acting—some viewers found aspects of Stone’s portrayal or the film’s overall direction not to their taste, and this variety of opinion is reflected in the 7.8 rating.

How IMDb Ratings Are Calculated and Why Poor Things’ Score Matters

Understanding how IMDb arrives at its 7.8 rating requires understanding the platform’s methodology. IMDb does not simply average all votes submitted by users. Instead, it employs a weighted algorithm that filters out potentially fraudulent votes and gives more weight to votes from established, consistent reviewers.

This means that a film with thousands of votes from active, legitimate users receives a more reliable rating than one with a smaller sample size. Poor Things has accumulated enough votes from enough legitimate users that its 7.8 rating carries substantial credibility. The IMDb algorithm also considers vote distribution, not just the average score.

If a film received mostly 9s and 10s along with some 1s and 2s, that broader distribution might result in a lower displayed rating than a film where most votes clustered around 7 and 8.

Poor Things’ 7.8 rating suggests that the film attracted considerable agreement among voters about its quality—it wasn’t divisive in the way that truly controversial films can be.

This consensual nature of the rating is one tradeoff worth noting: films with very clear fan bases (people who love them) and detractors (people who hate them) often show more dramatic differences between their IMDb ratings and their critical reception.

One important practical consideration is that IMDb’s weighted algorithm means early votes from prominent users can influence a film’s rating trajectory. However, as more votes accumulate over time, the overall rating tends to stabilize toward a true consensus.

Poor Things’ 7.8 rating has likely settled into its final position at this point, making it a reliable indicator of its broad reception.

For viewers trying to decide whether to watch the film, this rating provides useful guidance—it suggests you’re more likely to enjoy the film than not, though whether you’ll love it depends on your taste for experimental cinema.

Rating Biases and Limitations You Should Know About

Like all user-generated rating systems, IMDb ratings carry inherent biases that are important to understand. One significant bias is that people who have strong reactions—either extremely positive or negative—are more likely to rate films than those with moderate opinions.

However, this bias appears less pronounced for a film like Poor Things, which achieved a reasonably high rating despite its unconventional nature.

A more relevant bias for this particular film is the cinephile skew on IMDb: serious film enthusiasts are overrepresented on the platform compared to casual movie watchers, which means Poor Things’ rating likely reflects the opinions of people more inclined to appreciate avant-garde cinema.

Another limitation to consider is that IMDb ratings do not capture the variance in why people rated a film a particular way. Someone might give Poor Things an 8 because they loved its visual innovation and found it gorgeous to watch.

Someone else might give it an 8 because they appreciated the emotional journey despite finding aspects confusing.

The 7.8 rating flattens these different motivations into a single number. This is why reading actual reviews alongside the rating provides more useful information—you can understand not just whether people thought the film was good, but what specifically they valued or disliked about it.

A critical warning: do not assume that the IMDb rating perfectly predicts whether you personally will enjoy a film. Poor Things is a particularly good example of this limitation.

The film’s surrealist visual style, unconventional narrative structure, and themes of gender and autonomy mean it will appeal strongly to some viewers and leave others feeling confused or alienated.

Someone who loves traditional three-act narratives and realistic cinematography might rate Poor Things lower than its 7.8 average, while someone who prizes originality and artistic vision might consider it underrated. Always factor in your own preferences and past viewing history when using ratings to decide whether to watch a film.

Using the Rating Alongside Plot and Director Information

The 7.8 IMDb rating gains additional meaning when you consider it in the context of Poor Things’ plot and its director, Yorgos Lanthimos. Lanthimos is known for creating films that challenge conventional storytelling—previous works like The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite demonstrate his commitment to distinctive visual styles and unconventional character relationships.

Knowing this context helps explain why Poor Things earned a 7.8 rather than a higher or lower score. The film delivered exactly what Lanthimos fans expected: ambitious, visually striking cinema that doesn’t follow mainstream conventions.

The plot of Poor Things centers on Bella Baxter, a woman resurrected by a brilliant scientist, who embarks on a journey of discovery and self-actualization. This premise alone signals that viewers are in for something different from typical romance narratives.

The film balances dark comedy, philosophical inquiry, and emotional depth in ways that don’t map neatly onto conventional genres. The 7.8 rating reflects that Lanthimos successfully executed this vision in a way that satisfied most viewers who showed up knowing what kind of film they were watching.

For viewers who stumbled into Poor Things expecting mainstream romance or comedy, the rating might indicate disappointment from that particular subset of voters.

The Lasting Impact of Poor Things’ Critical and Audience Reception

As Poor Things continues to circulate through streaming platforms and home video, its 7.8 IMDb rating may shift slightly, though probably not dramatically. Films with this level of critical acclaim and this many accumulated votes typically see rating stability over time. However, the film’s long-term cultural impact will likely reinforce or validate its current rating.

As more critics and film scholars discuss Poor Things in retrospectives about 2023 cinema, and as film students encounter the film in academic settings, the conversation around it will deepen.

This academic and critical attention may introduce new viewers who approach the film from analytical perspectives rather than entertainment-seeking ones, potentially adding votes that align with professional critical assessment. The true measure of Poor Things’ success transcends its 7.8 IMDb rating.

Emma Stone’s awards sweep, Lanthimos’ ongoing recognition as a significant contemporary filmmaker, and the film’s presence in countless “best of” lists suggest that it has secured a lasting place in cinema.

The 7.8 rating represents a specific moment in audience reception, but the film’s critical trajectory indicates it will likely be remembered as a significant work of contemporary cinema.

For future viewers discovering the film, the rating will continue to serve as a useful entry point—an indicator that this is a film worth the time investment, particularly if you appreciate cinema that challenges and innovates.

Conclusion

Poor Things’ 7.8 IMDb rating reflects strong audience appreciation for a film that successfully balances artistic ambition with broad appeal. The score places the film among well-regarded contemporary cinema and indicates that most viewers found it to be a quality piece of filmmaking, even while acknowledging that its unconventional approach won’t resonate equally with everyone.

Emma Stone’s award-winning performance clearly contributed significantly to the film’s reception, and the gap between the IMDb score and the 93% critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reveals how professional critics recognized the film as a significant artistic achievement.

When deciding whether to watch Poor Things, use the 7.8 rating as useful information but not as the final word.

The rating accurately indicates that the film is worth your time if you appreciate innovative cinema and are willing to engage with unconventional storytelling. However, your personal enjoyment will depend on how much you value artistic vision over narrative familiarity, and whether Lanthimos’ distinctive visual approach appeals to you.

If you watch challenging, original films and appreciated past Lanthimos work, the 7.8 rating likely understates how much you’ll enjoy Poor Things. If you prefer straightforward narratives and realistic cinematography, you might find yourself rating the film lower than its IMDb average suggests.

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