10 Creative Ways Movies Got You To See Them

There’s something about human nature, about being able to perceive ourselves, that makes us unique in the animal kingdom, and this is a trait that movie marketing teams have largely failed to explore over the years. But, for every rule, there’s an exception, and in this case it’s none other than the movie that helped to re-popularise found footage after Blair Witch’s initial peak: Paranormal Activity.

By 2007, the found footage wave had well and truly crashed, and people weren’t falling for the “true story” shtick that had worked previously. Thus, the team behind the low budget haunting horror came up with an equally low-budget idea.

Test screenings had audiences reacting in some pretty full-on ways, hiding, jumping, screaming, and just generally doing all the things horror movie makers hope to provoke. As such, the marketing campaign led with this. Rather than just showing the trailer, it showed a cinema full of people watching the trailer and reacting in the dark via night vision cameras facing the audience. And boy did it ever work, generating massive buzz around the flick and netting $200 million at the box office (against a low six-figure budget).