even before social media, marketing teams were doing that...i remember they were saying that about Paranormal Activity and I vaguely remember Blair Witch getting the same kinda reactions
but i feel you, these influencers exaggerating
Both those movies had incredible marketing campaigns, but I don't think either marketing campaign is really that comparable. They all had hype, for sure, but how that hype was generated came from different strategies altogether.
Blair Witch was marketed like it was a true story. They made websites about the missing characters and the lore of the Blair Witch, and broadly sold the film like it was something real. That was how they sold the movie. So, Blair Witch built its hype on meta-marketing. It was similar to what
Longlegs did, building a world and lore before anyone even got to the theater.
Paranormal Activity is the first movie I can think of that filmed audiences reacting to the movie. They had trailers that barely showed the movie, but showed nightvision footage of audiences freaking out and being scared. So, it wasn't just a word of mouth campaign. It was "look at how scared these people are while they watch our movie."
Paranormal Activity showed and proved how scary it was. That approach just got mimicked exactly by
Primate, check these two trailers out side by side:
Then you get
Undertone, which had marketing I'd compare more to
Skinamarink. Festival fans were like "wow, I've never seen anything quite like that" but that morphed into tik tok and twitter influencers claiming "this movie will scar your soul." The only difference is Skinamarink was complete trash while Undertone is actually pretty well done.