Snow White’s IMDb Nightmare

Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White has been bombarded with negative reviews, earning it a spot among IMDb’s lowest-rated films of all time. Despite some critics praising lead actress Rachel Zegler, 23, the film has been widely panned, with its IMDb score plummeting to 1.5 out of 10—placing it below notorious box-office disasters like Cats and Battlefield Earth.

However, the backlash against the film has gone beyond critiques of its storytelling. In recent weeks, Zegler herself has become a target, with some accusing online campaigns of deliberately tanking the film’s ratings as part of a wider smear effort against the West Side Story star. At the core of the controversy are her outspoken political views, which resurfaced ahead of the film’s release.

Zegler, who has publicly supported pro-Palestinian causes and criticized former U.S. President Donald Trump, faced intensified scrutiny after an August 2023 post on X, where she shared the first official Snow White trailer and later added, “And always remember, free Palestine.” Reports claim that both Disney executives and the film’s producer urged her to delete the post, but she refused.

As a result, Snow White has become the latest Disney project to suffer from review-bombing — a tactic that has affected several high-profile releases. The Acolyte, a Star Wars series starring Amandla Stenberg, saw its score nosedive after coordinated downvotes, ultimately leading to its cancellation. Similarly, 2023’s The Little Mermaid remake faced an onslaught of negative ratings, prompting IMDb to issue a warning about “unusual voting activity.”

Notably, the film’s reception is markedly different on Rotten Tomatoes, where user verification is required. Here, Snow White holds a more favorable audience score of 74%. This discrepancy raises ongoing questions about the reliability of online ratings and the impact of social media-fueled outrage.

Producer Marc Platt reportedly tried to mediate the situation, at one point advising Zegler that her comments were alienating a portion of the film’s audience. “She was signaling to a chunk of America that the forthcoming Disney film was not for them.”

As Disney continues to grapple with the fallout, the broader conversation around review-bombing and the intersection of politics and entertainment shows no signs of slowing down.