10 Most Divisive Movies Of 2017

9. A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story Casey Affleck
A24

Evidence of the divide A Ghost Story has caused among viewers can be found by observing its audience and critic ratings.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film garnered a 90% from critics, but a 65% from audiences; on Metacritic, it sits at an 84 critic score, and a slightly lower 68 user score; and currently, its IMDB user rating is a middle-of-the-road 6.9. What exactly caused this split?

Those that loved the film praised its atmosphere, black comedy and deft exploration of love and loss, the offbeat decision to prominently feature a white-sheeted ghost bringing a little levity to an otherwise bleak, depressing story.

Those on the other side of the fence found A Ghost Story to be plodding and unnecessarily drawn out, with scenes like the one where Rooney Mara eats a pie for five minutes straight - with no cuts and a completely still camera - giving the movie a pretentious, "look how clever I am" vibe, and making the whole thing feel much longer than it actually was.

Still, the film won several critic awards and with a meagre production budget of $100,000, had no problems making its money back.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!