10 Unique Tricks Every Movie Started To Rip-Off

The Trick

The Blair Witch Project wasn't only one of the pioneering entries in the found footage subgenre, but it also was one of the first films - and certainly the most effective - to hone early viral marketing techniques.

The film's ingenious marketing campaign basically served as an extension of the movie itself, suggesting that the three principal actors had in fact disappeared for real, and that the film's contents were their real found footage.

Back in 1999 when Internet adoption was still picking up, moviegoers at large weren't yet savvy to the tricks of viral marketing, and so the mystique surrounding the fate of the actors - who were contractually prevented from appearing in other movies and even listed as "missing, presumed dead" on IMDB - was easily sustained.

It was ultimately tremendously effective, the film grossing almost $250 million worldwide against a mere $500,000 budget.

The Rip-Offs

Unsurprisingly everybody in Hollywood was suddenly interested in using the Internet to their advantage to create elaborate viral marketing campaigns to sell their movies, and in the years that followed the results were of wildly varying quality.

On one hand, films like Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, and Deadpool expertly used the Internet to build hype and intrigue, yet the movie marketing landscape is also full of countless films which attempted to ride the viral marketing wave and failed spectacularly.

Case in point, Snakes on a Plane became a viral sensation which failed to translate into actual box office dollars, and perhaps most infamously, 2012's horror dud The Devil Inside ended with a cliffhanger which directed viewers to a website where they could learn more about the story. Right.

Viral marketing is of course a pervasive aspect of movie advertising today, with practically every major film enlisting PR firms to make their films trend worldwide by any means necessary - often through irreverent use of memes.

But even today, no film has invaded an audience's mindshare quite as persuasively as The Blair Witch Project.