These kinds of smaller movies, rightly or wrongly, are a dying breed as blockbusters dominate the theatrical calendar.
If Poms was beloved and the reviews helped spur great word of mouth, maybe it wouldn’t have flopped in this way, but it was probably never going to really deliver.
Counter-programming can be successful, and perhaps that, as well as coinciding with the Mother’s Day holiday was the strategy, but everything, including reviews, has to click, and that wasn’t the case here.