Promoting a new film is not easy. We have to surround the viewer with information from all sides with the help of a massive advertising campaign, interesting trailers, attracting celebrities and other techniques.
But some producers go even further and use witty or intimidating pranks to attract a wider audience.
We present to you the top 10 of the most interesting and memorable pranks used to promote various films.
10. Calls
When you walk into a hardware store to pick a new TV, you hardly expect the screen to come to life. Literally.
But this is exactly what the authors of this prank movie did, dressing up one of the actresses to look like the creepy heroine of the 2017 film “Calls”. And if in itself this horror movie about the damned cassette tape of Samara Morgan was poorly rated by the audience, becoming the worst in the trilogy, then the rally was much more successful.
9. Geostorm
This 2017 film was not a sensation of the year, but the few scenes in it are really amazing. These include boulder-sized hailstones, skyscrapers tumbling like dominoes, the terrible tsunami that struck Dubai and people frozen in the desert.
And so that people in reality feel the echoes of the same horror as the characters of Geostorm, the creatives of Warner Bros. Pictures came up with an original move. They froze an entire New York street (of course, not for real), installing mannequins of frozen people and animals on it.
And it was along this street that a fake taxi was carrying passengers. At this time, fake news about natural disasters that unexpectedly hit the Earth was played in the car, and birds supposedly frozen in flight were falling on top of the car.
8. Carrie
To promote a remake of the 2013 horror classic Carrie, the film crew scared visitors to a cafe in New York City.
Using props and a remote control, the advertisers arranged everything as if the girl with the help of mental abilities took revenge on the guy who spilled her coffee. She allegedly threw him into the wall with the power of telekinesis, and then began to destroy the cafe, moving tables and chairs without using her hands and screaming to tear things off the walls. Can you imagine how the people present at this scene felt?
7. One less
But this joke could very well end very badly for both the actors and the audience, if one of them had a weak heart.
To promote the release of the 2012 grossing thriller One Less on Blu-Ray, the team equipped a New York elevator with hidden cameras and asked a male actor to pretend he was strangling another guy. Some of the victims of this prank screamed in horror, some tried to help, and others pretended not to notice before leaving.
If you really want to lose faith in humanity, please look at the guy at 1:35 minutes. He calmly pulls out his camera phone to take a picture.
6. Curse of Chucky
As if the story about the killer doll is not creepy enough in itself, the PR people also decided to tickle the nerves of potential viewers with a practical joke to promote the film.
The team hid a guy in a Chucky suit behind a movie poster at a bus stop in Brazil. While the people waited for their transport, the fake Chucky burst through the glass and stalked unsuspecting victims with a knife in hand. This is pretty extreme in terms of a joke, but a very memorable sight.
5. Shark tornado
This is a 5-movie franchise that everyone loves to hate for its gruesome special effects, hideous dialogue and strange looking sharks in an incredibly fake tornado.
Fortunately, there is an interesting prank that at least partially compensates for the extreme squalor of this movie.
For the second part of "Shark Tornado" the English TV channel Syfy decided to place an animatronic shark in a fish store. And hidden cameras have captured the reaction of customers when a shark comes to life right next to them.
4. Coming of the devil
While this 2014 horror film about a woman pregnant with the Antichrist fell in viewership ratings, it served as the basis for a diabolical joke.
Imagine a situation: you are walking down the street, when you suddenly notice a stroller rolling by itself and hear a baby crying. Driven by a sense of excitement for a toddler left unattended, you walk up to the stroller, fold back its sun visor and see ... something like the baby Gollum, with a distorted face and eyes without whites.
But at the same time, it can also pour over you with vomit (more precisely, with the composition that its creators wanted to pass off as vomiting). I don’t know about you, dear readers, but my heart would sink into my heels.
3. The Conjuring 2
In many horror films, there is a scene in which the protagonist, “to wake himself up from a nightmare,” splashes water in his face and then looks in the mirror. Sometimes the hero opens the cabinet in the bathroom, and when he closes it again, another face appears in the mirror on the door, or a figure is visible directly behind the character.
To promote The Conjuring 2, a prank was invented that used a two-way mirror. In it, the image of a creepy nun was shown to unsuspecting bathroom users. And then another actress portrayed an otherworldly creature already emerging from the mirror.
2. Paranormal Activity: Ghosts in 3D
The success of the first "Paranormal Activity" spawned many sequels, including the 2015 release of Ghosts in 3D.
To create a buzz ahead of its release, a hidden camera was installed in the original house used for the first film. The house was allegedly put up for sale, and during the "open door" session potential buyers got much more impressions than they expected. Let's put it this way: welcome to the ghostly dimension!
1. It
A list of the best pranks for movie advertising would be incomplete without mentioning one of scariest horror movies of all time.
When "It" was released at Prime Cinemas in Bolivia, the managers of the establishment decided it would be fun to advertise the film by having one employee dress up as a creepy clown and scare people.
Although this disguised clown looks more like Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise rather than the creepy Pennywise, he still managed to tickle the nerves of several people.