These Are the Most Hated Movies of All Time, According to Rotten Tomatoes

A new report by JB.com used data from Rotten Tomatoes to determine the most critically beloved movies that are universally despised by audiences. The report compared each film’s Tomatometer score with audience scores on the same platform. The choices were ranked based on the differential between professional acclaim and the opinion of audiences. 

'Most Polarizing Film Ever' Was Last Year's Oscar Favorite

According to the report, 2025 Oscar favorite Emilia Pérez is “the most polarizing film ever,” with a critical consensus of 70 percent and an audience score of 17 percent. That’s a differential of 53 percent. Emilia Pérez followed a criminal attorney (Zoe Saldaña) who becomes embroiled with cartel leader Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón), who wishes to fake his own death so he may undergo gender transition, becoming Emilia Pérez.

The film was nominated for 13 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Gascon, the first openly transgender woman to be nominated for the honor. Zoe Saldaña won a deserved but controversial Supporting Actress Oscar for her role, despite playing the lead. However, the film came under fire when racist and inflammatory social media messages, apparently posted by Gascon, resurfaced during awards season.

Audience Disappointment Dominated the Results

Unlike Emilia Pérez, which audiences seemed to find polarizing for different reasons, the other films named in JB.com's report are mostly niche products that were misleadingly marketed to mainstream audiences. Second on the list is Trey Edward Schultz’s It Comes at Night (44 percent difference between audiences and critics), starring Joel Edgerton and Riley Keough. It was marketed as an edge-of-your-seat horror movie, with the trailers implying zombies or some other malevolent force; but it’s a pretty grim chamber drama about a group of people trying to survive an unspecified pandemic, which concludes with two extended sequences of familicide.

David Lowery’s The Green Knight took third place. Similarly, Lowery’s low-key medieval drama was marketed as a blazing sword-and-sandals epic with lots of creatures and special effects. But the serio-comic tone was not appealing to audiences, nor was the philosophical, dialogue-heavy screenplay. Lowery also secured the sixth spot with A Ghost Story. That was an existential, time-hopping romantic drama which was marketed as something akin to The Conjuring.

Scarlet Johansson’s sci-fi horror Under the Skin placed fourth, with a 28 percent differential. The movie’s open-ended and enigmatic narrative, which refuses to explain itself at every turn, was not appreciated by audiences despite being hailed by critics as one of the greatest movies of the 21st century. The very same can be said for the rest of the list: Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (number seven at 23 percent); Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster (number eight at 22 percent); Alex Garland’s Annihilation (number nine at 21 percent); and Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (number 10 at 18 percent).

These are the most polarizing movies of all time, in chronological order:

• Emilia Pérez (2024)

• It Comes at Night (2017)

• The Green Knight (2019)

• Under the Skin (2014)

• The Tree of Life (2011)

• A Ghost Story (2017)

• The Master (2012)

• The Lobster (2016)

• Annihilation (2018)

The Lighthouse (2019)