In decades past, Hollywood decided that marketing campaigns for horror movies are simple formulas. After all, since the genre was considered low-brow and its audience niche but dedicated, why throw much money toward it at all? However, in recent years, the amount of horror fans has grown rapidly, and with the help of social media, things have changed drastically. 

In the early-2000s, films like Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project utilized mystery and virality to grow audiences as well as interest for their releases, providing interactive experiences like websites and riddles. This kind of breadcrumb campaign is what Longlegs builds on, honoring an old tradition by embracing its aesthetic but doing so in a very fresh way. 

Often, the marketing for a film starts once the first teaser or trailer is released. These clips often give an audience a lot of context for the plot of the film, often even frustratingly spoiling some of its pivotal contents. In the case of Longlegs, things went differently... 

In January, the film released its first teaser, a cryptic visual puzzle with eerie images of bodies and empty, blood-soaked rooms with a 36-second audio clip of a 9-1-1 call. Throughout the first month of 2024, two more teasers were released with similar profiles, all giving no outward context apart from a bone-chilling compilation of whispers, dead bodies, and uncertain movements.

In February, the campaign unveiled four official posters for the film as well as a full, 90-second trailer that was still as cryptic as all the rest. With every new detail, something new was revealed but something so without context and without explanation that it didn’t give enough for satisfaction. It’s in this way that the campaign is so successful. It grabs your attention and forces you to attempt to solve its puzzle, only to inform you that you can’t. The only way to truly solve it is to keep paying attention — to keep following the trail of breadcrumbs all the way to the box office. 

After its mid-July release date was announced, the campaign has increased in speed and aggression with viral codes displayed in public and online, which some have begun to break. Almost all solvable messages are still unknowable, prophetic biblical babble that they are. 

Among the most viral instances of marketing genius were a fake in-universe website called The Birthday Murders and a billboard with nothing but a phone number embedded on a frightening image that leads curious callers to a terrifying string of voice memos left by what seems to be the film’s titular serial killer. On top of this, the film holds press screenings every few weeks or so, constantly meeting very positive, and very public, critical acclaim that reinvigorates audience interest. 

We still have no idea what Longlegs has in store for us, but we’re sure it will be unsettling. And if we’re sure of one other thing, it’s that the theater won’t have a single empty seat when it opens on July 12!