If It’s Not a Love Story or Horror, It’s a Copy?

This is how it works these days.

You make a film that doesn’t have a ghost?

It’s not horror?

Not a love story either?

Congrats.. it’s now officially called a “Hollywood copy.” Or worse  a “Korean rip-off.”

Welcome to the lazy take universe.

Forget genre. Forget form. Forget treatment.

If your film even dares to do something different — a slow-burn thriller, a black comedy, a dystopian political drama, a daring sci-fi, or a new kind of screenplay  it’s immediately branded as a copy.

Not even given a moment to breathe.

A genuine effort, something that took vision and nerve to make, is tossed aside with one word: “copied.”

It’s not even criticism.

It’s cultural insecurity hiding behind memes and screenshots.

The moment a film experiments outside the familiar  when it doesn’t hold the audience’s hand, when it tries a different structure, tone, or world  it’s not seen as genre-defining. It’s seen as borrowed.

No curiosity. No question of “What is this trying to do?”

Just a quick, smug verdict: “Must’ve taken this from somewhere.”

They don’t even understand what they’re watching, but they’ll dissect it.

They’ll post stills side-by-side.

They’ll take one similar shot from a 2014 French film and act like they cracked the code.

“Gotcha! Copycat cinema!”

Like cinema didn’t exist before them.

Like every story isn’t just a new skin over an old soul.

And behind all this there’s ego.

The need to feel smarter than the creator.

To tear down someone’s years of work with a one-liner, just to prove they’ve “seen more,” “know more,” or “caught a reference.”

But this isn't a critique. It’s performance.

A spotlight not on the film  but on their own supposed brilliance.

And often, it’s not even about the film.

It’s about what they haven’t achieved in their own lives

The risks they didn’t take.

The dreams they abandoned.

The art they never made.

So they hide behind anonymous profiles,

Wear sarcasm like armor,

And project their insecurity as intelligence.

If they’re not hiding behind anonymity,

They’re right in front of the camera  spewing venom like it’s critique.

Loud, confident, performative.

But the root of it?

It’s always the ego.

The need to feel big by making someone else feel small.

And while all this noise happens here,

Foreign audiences watch films across genres, celebrate them for what they are  and move on.

There, it’s just another genre.

Here, it becomes a crime.

There, they discuss ideas.

Here, they dismiss effort.

The creativity is killed. The creator is doomed.

If a film reminds them of something  it’s “copied.”

If it feels totally new  it’s “borrowed.”

There’s no win.

Too close? It’s a clone. Too different? It’s stolen.

What no one seems to ask is: What’s this story trying to say?

Where’s the voice? The treatment? The craft?

Because similarity doesn’t mean theft.

And familiarity doesn’t make it any less original.

And somewhere in this loud, trigger-happy judgment, a creator is silently suffocating.

Hesitating.

Second-guessing.

Holding back an idea  not because it’s not worthy  but because they know the moment it releases, someone will call it a copy.

That fear is real. That silence is louder than any “review.”

And we are losing good stories not because they were never written, but because they were never allowed to be told.

Few creators are buried under this fear and those stories are never told.

Few others are suffocating even after telling it  because the story they bled for never got the recognition it deserved.

Either way, something beautiful dies quietly.

What happened to understanding that most stories have already been told but it’s how you tell them that makes them powerful?

What happened to seeing genre as a starting point, not a cage?

A space to explore, not a rulebook to follow?

The structure isn’t the story  the treatment is.

The mood, the rhythm, the voice, that's where originality lives.

We kill the effort before it breathes.

We mock ambition before it settles.

We dismiss a director’s treatment without even pausing to learn what the film was aiming to be.

It’s brutal. And it’s short-sighted.

And ironically  it’s these same people who turn around and celebrate Western films for being “genre-defining” or “visionary.”

But when someone here tries to make a film in that space  with its own treatment, rooted in our voice  they kill it with the word copy.

Let’s be honest:

Everything has been said before.

But the difference lies in how it’s said.

The texture, the tone, the truth behind it.

And more than anything  the courage to try.

We kill our films here and celebrate others.

We mock our stories, and worship the same tropes when they wear foreign skin.

Let our cinema thrive.

Let our directors explore.

Let us experience great cinema  not filtered by ignorance, but felt in full.

Because we do have the brains that think ahead,

The vision that breaks moulds,

The exceptional talent that is unbeatable

But if our directors are restricted, mocked, or curbed,

There might soon be no cinema left worth remembering.

All it needs is a little more space.

And a lot less fear.

- Pearl May Art