With more than 700 movies released in theaters last year, viewers have too many options to choose from nowadays; they need a quick, accessible way to weed out bad movies from good ones — hence the popularity of sites such as Rotten Tomatoes.

According to a Facebook poll of 47 students, 64 percent of students said they read reviews before watching a movie, and 76 percent use Rotten Tomatoes. Google’s movie reviews and IMDb trail behind, with 48 percent and 46 percent of students using each respectively.

What separates Rotten Tomatoes from the competition is its simplicity. Its rating system, the Tomatometer, turns the process of determining whether a movie is worthy of being watched into a simple choice.

The Tomatometer sorts movies into three simple categories: “Rotten,” for movies that earn less than 60 percent of total reviews as positive ones; “Fresh,” for movies that break the 60 percent mark; and “Certified Fresh,” for movies that surpass 70 percent and have been reviewed more than 80 times by at least five top critics. Critics must pass a set of detailed criteria and must also be listed as contributors to one of the top publications in the U.S.

It’s not hard to see why moviegoers have revered it as a benchmark for rating movies. Rotten Tomatoes even calls its Tomatometer “the most trusted measurement of quality entertainment.”

In many cases, these ratings are influential enough that they can potentially make or break a movie. This summer, films such as “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” and “Baywatch” fell short of their box office goals. Both “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Baywatch” received abysmally low Rotten ratings, at 29 percent and 19 percent respectively.

Unfortunately, consumers love the Tomatometer for its simplicity, and that’s the same reason Rotten Tomatoes cannot be 100 percent trusted: It’s oversimplified.

Rotten Tomatoes only designates a film as either Rotten or Fresh by looking at positive or negative reviews. There’s no room for an in-between rating. That means that a movie critic who had mixed feelings about a movie must say that it’s Rotten or Fresh and can’t give a more detailed opinion.

What this means is that movies such as “Annabelle: Creation” have debuted with 100 percent ratings, based on the reviews of between 10 to 20 critics. Evidently, all the critics found the movie at least decent, hence the perfect score.

However, when compared to “Dunkirk,” rated 93 percent by more than 300 critics, most would consider the quality of the 2017 horror flick to be a far cry from the lauded war film. “Dunkirk” got several rotten ratings, but of the remaining 295 reviews, many critics praised the film for its brilliance.

While the scores sometimes even out over time —  “Annabelle: Creation” now lists a 70 percent rating, compared with “Dunkirk’s” 92 — the initial scores can have a huge effect on prospective audiences in those critical days after a movie is released.

More specific criticisms or praise of a movie are also muddied by the Tomatometer. If a critic hates the movie’s plot but loves its cinematography, Rotten Tomatoes can’t reflect that level of specificity in its overall rating.

The Tomatometer also isn’t able to gauge how much a critic liked a movie. An all-out rave about the movie and a slightly positive review are all the same in the Tomatometer’s eyes, so a  movie with rave reviews can theoretically receive the same coveted Certified Fresh badge as a movie with universally lukewarm reviews.

Another facet of Rotten Tomatoes lies in its freedom granted to audience ratings. In addition to the critic rating on the Tomatometer, Rotten Tomatoes also gives the general moviegoer a chance to rate a movie in its Audience Score.

This degree of flexibility adds another problem to the site’s reliability. Critics in this second category don’t even need to watch the movie they’re critiquing before leaving a review. It’s easier for viewers to jump on a bandwagon to leave bad reviews for a movie en masse.

Such was the case of the “Ghostbusters” reboot that featured an all-female cast of protagonists. While the film was Certified Fresh with a 74 percent positive rating in the Tomatometer, it was considered Rotten under the Audience Score with a 52 percent rating.

And while movies may receive overwhelmingly negative reviews through the Audience Score, that doesn’t discredit the movie entirely to some.

“I usually follow the Audience Score because it is more relatable to me,” junior Santiago Dutro said. “Although ‘Ghostbusters 2016’ had a horrible Audience Score, I thought it was actually pretty funny.”

Similarly, a movie that critics might have raved about may not be all that appealing to a general audience. According to Dutro, critics tend to look at movies in terms that aren’t entirely accessible by the common viewer, so movies such as “Mud,” which starred Matthew McConaughey, had artistic elements that attracted the attention of critics but weren’t liked by the public.

On the other hand, some viewers prefer Metacritic, which uses a weighted average system in which it compiles a large group of respected critics and publications, assigning more importance to some based on their quality and stature. After a movie, game, television show or album receives at least four reviews, it is given a Metascore out of 100.

Furthermore, though many students often refer to movie ratings online, most also rely on what they hear from other friends or acquaintances. In junior Madeline Stuart’s case, she usually checks with different groups of friends and other MAP students about movies she is interested in watching, and refers to Rotten Tomatoes to “see how original the film is.”

“Sites like Rotten Tomatoes are responsible for some influence on a movie,” Stuart said, “But it’s really up to the individual to decide if it’s a film worth seeing.”

Although Rotten Tomatoes can’t give movie consumers a complex, in-depth review of a movie, it’s still useful when choosing to watch a movie. It offers an easy way for someone to choose a movie to watch in a short period of time.

And even though it doesn’t tell them if a Certified Fresh movie is truly a qualitatively good movie, viewers will be able to read a more detailed review of a movie if Rotten Tomatoes’ rating helps pique their interest in the film, lessening the odds that they will have a rotten time.