Upcoming psychological horror Smile caused a furore last weekend with an apparently viral marketing stunt. Actors appeared at a number of Major League Baseball games, staring and maniacally into cameras behind home plate to promote the film.
While the stunt certainly attracted attention for Smileit also prompted fans to share their experiences with viral marketing campaigns for other horror films.
A movie that did this exceptionally well? The Supernatural Horror of 2002 The ring.
TikTok user astro_nina, aka Nina Fitzgerald, took to the platform to talk about the “sick” viral marketing campaign behind the film, an American remake of J-horror classic ringu.
According to Fitzgerald, the film’s “cursed tape” was widely and randomly distributed before The ring‘s release.
“Their marketing strategy was essentially ‘let’s get this tape seen by as many people as possible without these people being aware of what this is, kind of intrigue,'” she says.
One way they accomplished this was by airing the tape, which reportedly marks viewers for death within seven days, as an uncontextual commercial. The video would air in between the nightly programming “without words, no mention of a movie, for about a month…so people would bump into it and it would just move on to the next one, and people would be like,” what the hell is this?'”
Marketing for The ring Also creepy websites included
While a late-night TV spot would be scary enough for most, Fitzgerald says the studios went one step further.
“But then they would also leave the physical VHS tape in different places,” said Fitzgerald, who describes how tapes were placed under seats in movie theaters and on car windows outside events. The tapes are said to play the “cursed” video and direct viewers to a disturbing network of websites, including a site of a murderer who fell victim to the tape.
Although Fitzgerald says that Dreamworks, the studio behind The ring, removed the sites from the internet and denied any involvement after the film’s release, users on Reddit were able to: locate the archived pages.
Starring Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Daveigh Chase and directed by Gore Verbinski, The ring is available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube.