With Autumn rolling around and Halloween classics waiting in the wings, it’s time to reflect on Slasher Summer. While far from your average summer camp scary movie, Neon’s latest horror release Longlegs had film snobs and adrenaline junkies alike all waiting in anticipation, and given the classic that their Oscar-winning Parasite is quickly becoming, this is no surprise.
Although apparently what was a surprise, was the film becoming the highest-grossing indie horror of the last 10 years in the States, grossing over $58.6 million just 3 weeks after its release, to which Variety called the film a “sleeper hit’’.
But to those of us whose TikTok algorithms have us, willingly or not, tuned in to the self-named ‘filmtok’, this box office win was anything but a surprise. Longlegs has been at the centre of non-stop discussion on the social media platform, and this was certainly no accident. For months leading up to the film’s release, Neon specifically targeted social media with their marketing campaign, even going as far as to create interactive online riddles to solve, which then flooded onto TikTok as creators began spreading their plethora of theories.
As well as this, well-loved horror influencers received PR boxes, prompting them to promote the film further. This hype-led marketing then culminated with a video posted by Neon on July 8th, displaying certified scream queen Maika Monroe’s heart rate skyrocketing as she first saw Nicholas Cage in his Longlegs makeup, all while leaving his face tantalisingly hidden from the camera.
This final marketing move gets to the epicentre of what Neon have done so successfully with Longlegs, bringing back speculation to the cinema. What this made me personally think back to was the cult 90’s horror Jacob’s Ladder, specifically its trailer, within which we as an audience are given almost nothing revealed to us: with quick jump cuts and choppy dialogue leaving us with more questions than answers. This gives a dichotomy with current marketing, which seems to rely on revealing a huge chunk of the plot to watchers in order to reel them in.
So it appears Longlegs has found a beautiful medium within the genre. Keep as much of the plot under wraps as possible, while not letting this keep a release on the down-low altogether, instead embrace the sense of unknown and let it propel the discussion itself. We’ll have to wait and see if any other studios take Neon’s lead, and if they do, it could be a promising future for the genre with a new generation.