Kannada cinema has a new headache: Paid reviews

On social media, the pattern is often predictable when a prominent Kannada film hits the screens: a bunch of posts flood X (formerly Twitter), describing how good the movie is. The stock phrases range from “Kannada cinema goes to the next level” to “epic climax”. Insiders to the industry identify these as markers of the disturbing trend of “paid reviews”.

Influencer culture is making its presence felt in the film industry, and campaigns are meticulously planned. The film team decides what goes out, down to every word, in a WhatsApp group. The public relations (PR) team then identifies a bunch of X users with a decent number of subscribers and pays them to share tweets favouring the movie, say insiders of the industry. The same goes for Instagram promotions, where people identifying as “film reviewers” and “experts” provide reviews for a price.

A PR official, on condition of anonymity, told The Hindu that paid reviews and posts are seen as yet another marketing technique. “It is like a new restaurant or a dish. A critic may not prefer it, but a section of the audience will be interested to try them out. Continuous tweets, posts, and videos are meant to reach those people, so that they can go check out the movie.”

This approach to marketing is increasingly being called out by cinephiles who crave objective reviews. “You see 10–20 posts with similar wording. It’s easy to guess that the reviews aren’t genuine,” says S.S. Ravikumar, an upcoming filmmaker active on social media.

But these “orchestrated reviews” do not always work, says Pavithra Gowda, co-founder of the PR agency Pink Tickets. “A film can only sustain and win at the box office if its content resonates with the audience.” In the long run, paid reviews will affect an artist’s or a filmmaker’s reputation when the movie eventually fails to connect with the audience.

Taking a different route for promotion, the Raj B. Shetty-produced Su From So, one of the biggest hits of 2025, had paid-premiere shows in four-five cities of Karnataka before it hit the screens worldwide. The idea, as explained by Raj, was to skip the routine route of press conferences, interviews, and trailer-launch events, and take the film directly to people.

The formula worked, as organic word-of-mouth spread like wildfire. However, several films that followed the Su From So model tried to manipulate it. They created plenty of videos showing rapturous responses at the premiere shows, with paid and non-paid influencers forming part of the crowd. It was clear that the film teams were desperate to project that the movie had impressed fans. “The response can be confusing, making the audience lose the ability to distinguish between a paid promotion, personal opinion, and an honest review,” admitted a PR industry insider.

S. Shivakumar, veteran film critic and writer, says that paid reviews were not an uncommon phenomenon in the pre-social media era either, though they have changed form and reach now. “Of course, some accepted, and some didn’t,” he says.

A PR’s job is not simply about blindly pushing a movie, says Harish Arasu, founder of PR company Arasu Creations. “There will be many small-scale movies with great content. The producers won’t have the budget to market the movies,” he says, underlining the need to find novel ways to reach a wide audience. Negative campaigns also hurt the prospects of movies, he adds.

Kairam Vaashi, film critic, concurs that paid negative campaigns are equally dangerous. “They choke a movie before it gets a chance to blossom in its first week,” he says.

With the Kannada audience showing great reluctance to come to theatres except on rare occasions, the film industry is exploring every possible way to catch their attention. However, with paid reviews becoming more prevalent, the industry will have to look at other creative means to draw people to movies, especially as word-of-mouth is slowly becoming the deciding factor in a movie’s fate.