Six years ago, when I was still an active member of ‘stan Twitter’ – if you know, you know – I first heard about an app through my American mutuals: Letterboxd. At the time, I was discovering the joy of watching films every day, catching up on classics, and opening myself to new genres. So when someone told me there was an app where I could track everything I watched and give my opinion, I was over the moon. Without hesitation, I downloaded it and started logging and reviewing every film I watched. Back then, I think everyone on Letterboxd was trying to gatekeep the app a bit, afraid that too many users would arrive and turn our little secret garden into a zoo full of disastrous updates.
And yet, Letterboxd – which counted “only” 1.8 million users in March 2020 – now has over 20 million (as of September 2025). Created in 2011 in New Zealand by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, this social cataloguing application lets you rate the films you watch, review them, connect with other film fans, and even see what they think. A real little revolution in the world of cinema.
Before Letterboxd, film criticism remained something quite institutional. A film critic was “a cinephile coming from either journalism or art criticism, expressing their vision of a film.” In other words, a professional giving their opinion.
Review websites like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb (Internet Movie Database) dominated the sector. But neither really made film criticism accessible to the general public. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates professional reviews published in the media to centralise them on one platform, so that when people hesitate to watch a film, they can refer to the Tomatometer – the percentage of positive reviews. IMDb does allow any user to rate a film, but the site mostly acts as a database: cast, release dates, box office numbers, etc.
Letterboxd, with its very community-based format and social-media aesthetic, changes everything. It isn’t just a tool: it’s a space where film lovers – often from Gen Z, sometimes not cinephiles at all – can speak up, give their opinion, make jokes, analyse scenes, or simply drop a star rating and move on. In short: it truly democratises film criticism, or at least access to it.
For this article, I conducted a small survey and got 32 responses (not a lot, but still). The results are surprisingly consistent and raise important points. For example, almost everyone agrees that the rise of Letterboxd has helped democratise the art of film criticism. Most respondents also say the app has made them more interested in cinema: new releases, older films, directors, etc. More than half of them (62.5%) have only been using the app for 1 to 2 years. No one said that they’d been using it for more than 4. This shows that the current boom is recent and massive.
Above all, almost all respondents said that Letterboxd has genuinely changed the way they watch films. They pay more attention to details, become more critical, and adopt a more “analytical” way of viewing. They develop their critical thinking, and that’s exactly how I felt too. I no longer settle for “I like it” or “I don’t like it”; I try to explain why. It’s formative, and it gives a sense of progression.
But here’s the thing: this new way of watching films also has its less cute sides. Many said they spend their viewing time thinking, “What rating am I going to give this film?” or “What punchline could I put in my review?”. So yes, we’re more focused on details during the film, but sometimes we’re also more distracted. And having an app where you can easily access other people’s opinions can have negative effects. Other people’s reviews can influence our own feelings, our rating, and our final verdict. 62.5% of respondents admit they’re sometimes influenced by others’ opinions – honestly, so am I to some extent.
When I watch a film I enjoyed and then go on Letterboxd to rate it, I sometimes lower my rating because the average is low and the reviews are mid. Or the opposite. And when talking with other users, you can sense that this pressure is almost universal. We don’t lose our own reaction to a film just to align with other people’s opinions, but it can be distorted – and that raises questions.
Performativity is a concept referring to everything we do to reinforce our image or make a good impression on others. As sociologist Pierre Bourdieu defined it, cultural capital is the collection of cultural resources (knowledge, skills, degrees, cultural objects) that a person possesses and can mobilise. The concept goes hand in hand with economic capital: basically, whether you’re rich or poor. Without diving into a heavy, unfun sociological analysis, here’s a caricature but accurate example: a Marvel fan is automatically taken less seriously than someone who loves six-hour Bulgarian films from the 1920s. Society assumes the second person has more refined, legitimate taste and greater culture – even though taste is supposed to be subjective.
So, for some people, Letterboxd has turned the act of liking films in your private sphere into a “public performance”, as if we had something to prove to ourselves and others. There, therefore, exists an unspoken hierarchy of films: some films feel “Letterboxd-approved”, others less so.
You can see this on the app. Many profiles seem… curated. As if everyone were trying to construct a coherent, aesthetic and respectable cinephile identity – even at the cost of filtering their taste. And honestly, I sometimes feel like we’re performing a version of ourselves on the app: our films, our lists, our stars become a set, a moodboard. This sentiment came up again and again in the survey responses. We don’t entirely lose our taste, but the social media nature of the app amplifies a very modern tendency: being seen liking something.
But in the end, don’t get me wrong: I LOVE Letterboxd, and I use it every day. Filling up my diary, discovering films, adding tags to remember who I watched something with, giving stars after a viewing, reading other users’ often hilarious reviews, connecting with other film lovers… There’s a lot of good in this app, and I do think its arrival has had a positive impact on the way we watch films and share our tastes. But it also reflects a society where we’re more prone to being influenced by others, comparing ourselves, and performing an image of who we are.
So maybe we sometimes need to go back to basics: watching a film just because we feel like it, jotting down our immediate thoughts on a piece of paper while we digest the film, instead of rushing straight to check the film’s average rating or other people’s reviews. That’s what I’m going to try doing, after this survey and the many fruitful discussions I’ve had with other users. Taking a step back, reconnecting with my own taste. And just… liking or disliking a film, without thinking about how it will look on my profile.
