The Missing 9: Why Some Movies Have a Hole in Their Ratings

Two movies can have the same rating, but get there in very different ways. Let's take a look at one of the biggest movies of 2025, KPop Demon Hunters, a surprise Netflix movie hit with a soundtrack that has topped Billboard charts for months. I thought it was a fun film, and like over 96,000 others, went to play critic on IMDb. When I got there though, I noticed a weird distribution on the rating chart. There's a "9-gap".

Maybe this is typical though? Something like Amazon reviews are often just 1★s or 5★s, is it the same for IMDb ratings? Not quite. Let's look at Toy Story 4. It's another family movie, and the same solid 7.6★ rating as Demon Hunters. Yet, no 9-gap?

In this article we'll dig into this 9-gap and figure out which kinds of films have one and which don't. As we do, we'll build up a field guide of different kinds of distributions; the "anti-9-gap", the "10ers", the most "normal" and the most "abnormal". Then we'll think how to build a unifying model that separates out the views of the Lovers, the Haters, and the Normies, to reveal the many kinds of film.

This is still a v0.1 draft. We'll get into the top 9-gap, but the full tour of distributions is still forthcoming

The Data

Main Data: There are over 727 thousand movies on IMDb. We look at a smaller sample that combines two lists from November 2025. First is the highest rated 3000 movies of all time (with at least 50k ratings). The 3000th highest rated movie has a rating of 6.5★, so still decently good. We want to include some bad movies in this too, so we look at the top 3000 movies of the 21st century sorted by number of ratings (not score). The lowest film on this list has about 57k ratings and the worst film on the list has 1.0★. We combine these two lists together, and after removing duplicates we have 4115 films.

Filtering: Some of these films are still fairly obscure, or were just hits in one country. We filter out movies without a MPA content rating (like PG, PG-13, etc). This serves as a rough filter for films that didn't see a major theatrical or television run. This leaves 3894 films.

The 9-Gap

We'll say a film has a 9-gap if the number of raters who gave it a 9 is less than the number for both 8 and 10.

About 1,994 films (51.2%) have a 9-gap. However, this is often fairly small. We devise a formula, "9-gap-points", and sort them by this (see X for specifics). Let's look at the top-10 in 9-gap:

Looks like out of 3894 films, KPop Demon Hunters comes in #7 on 9-gap. It's definitely among the most weird in this regard. We can also start to speculate on a trend. 9-Gap films are generally fairly good movies (otherwise they wouldn't have a lot of 8s and 10s), but they hit particularly well with a certain group. The top film, A Dog's Purpose, seemingly hit really well with dog fansThere was also apparently a controversy where behind-the-scenes video gave the impression of animal abuse. However, this was later refuted as heavily edited. The controversy might partially explain why it has the highest number of 1s out any of the top 9-gap films.. It's a bit less clear what is fandom of #2 Hocus Pocus, but it is a Disney Halloween hit with strong 90s nostalgia and seasonal flair for a fanbase. Then there's KPop Demon Hunters. It found a strong set of fans enjoying the Korean cultural tones and music.

The Anti-9-Gap?

Coming in v0.2 or v0.3

Other Distributions in The Wild

Coming in v0.2

"Normal" vs "Abnormal"

Coming in v0.2 or v0.3

Lovers, Haters, and Normies

Coming in v0.2 or v0.3

Methodology

Coming in v0.2 or v0.3

Quantify the 9-Gap

Limitations

Not Every Movie We are covering a lot of movies, but not every film.

Conclusion

In this current article we begin to explore this strange trend in movies. The 9-gap is interesting. Whether in film or other endeavors, the 9-gap shows there are many paths to making something good. One can take the Toy Story 4 approach, just enjoyable enough for everyone, or the KPop Demon Hunters approach. Not enough to rise to 9 out of 10, but for some people, it is just what they are looking for.

Over the article versions I hope to flesh out the other kinds of trends. Let me know if you have feedback so far.