Hey Studios: The Movie You Hid from Critics Is Better Than the Ones You Didn't

Four movies opened in wide release last Friday, but only three, City of Ember, Body of Lies, and The Express, were screened for critics beforehand. The fourth, Quarantine, was kept hidden away, which has become common practice with the studios and their horror films. I like to call those movies Hollywood's Shameful Secrets.

Funny thing, though. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the critics who eventually saw Quarantine liked it better than most of the stuff the studios weren't ashamed to show. At the moment, it has a 61% Fresh ranking. The Express is only slightly higher, at 64%, while Body of Lies is far below it at 52%, and City of Ember is way back at 46%. At Metacritic, which comes up with an average score between 1 and 100 for each film, all four movies are basically tied: 54 for Quarantine and 58 for the other three.

So what gives here? About 95 percent of the time, if a movie isn't screened before it opens, it's mediocre at best, and it's usually downright bad. If Quarantine is actually pretty good -- better than the other new films last week, anyway -- why didn't Screen Gems let critics see it?
My theory: The people who make these decisions can't tell the difference between a good movie and a bad one. They're so used to judging movies entirely on how much money they'll make, and what demographics they'll appeal to, that when it comes to actual entertainment value, they're stymied. That's why the blanket policy lately is to keep all horror films hidden. Since so many of them tend to get bad reviews -- which is because so many of them are bad -- the studios think movie critics just don't like horror films. Which is nonsense, of course. When a horror film is good -- like, say, Quarantine -- the critics are more than happy to say so. But back at studio headquarters, they can't just take it on a case-by-case basis and screen the good ones while hiding the bad ones. Why? Because they can't tell the difference.

That's my theory, anyway. With Quarantine, they actually had screenings set up for Thursday night -- too late for print press, but still enough time for online critics to post their reviews on opening day. Then Screen Gems got antsy and uninvited the critics. In some cities, they simply lied and said the screenings had been canceled, then told the local reps not to admit any wayward critics who happened to show up. (Civilians who had gotten passes from radio station giveaways were still allowed.) In other words, Screen Gems actively hid the film from the press -- and then it turned out the press liked the movie anyway.

What's my point? I dunno. Just thought it was funny, that's all. Quarantine wound up out-scoring all the other new releases at the box office, too, but I bet it would have done even better if it'd had those positive reviews being published on opening day instead of later in the weekend. I'm just sayin'.