Interested in owning your very own haunted house? Well, NEON just might be able to help you. In a sneaky marketing move for Steven Soderbergh’s Presence, a ghost story told from the perspective of the ghost, they’ve set up viral marketing for the film’s real estate agent, Cece, with public advertising in New York City, as well as a website.
Working under the creatively named Specter Realty, the ad is visible in NEON’s latest tweet, which promises “finding your forever home” by visiting the new website. The site is simple, one page filled with standard schmaltzy text describing the home the film takes place in, plus the latest trailer for Presence, which stars Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, and Callina Liang. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll also find Cece’s number, which you can call to hear a voice message from the fictional realtor.
Presence’s big draw is the fact that it’s a supernatural horror film told from the perspective of an unusual character: the entity itself, rather than any of the human characters in the film. This strategy won the film major praise at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it made its premiere, and it isn’t the first horror film this year to employ that tactic. A new kind of slasher wowed audiences when In a Violent Nature hit theaters and they got to experience a slasher film not from the perspective of the victims being hunted, but of the slasher himself.
Additionally, the film’s poster is running with a unique angle, focusing not on the supernatural aspects of the story but on Soderbergh’s currency in Hollywood as a big-name director. The titles of his past films, including distinctly non-thriller titles like Erin Brockovich and Magic Mike, are superimposed over a ghostly face, which gives no real indication of what audiences can expect once the film arrives in theaters in January.
This isn’t the first time distributor Neon has drawn out the promotion for their upcoming horror films with small, bite-sized teases of what’s to come. The same was true of the marketing for Longlegs, which danced around showing Nicolas Cage’s titular killer – or even Maika Monroe’s FBI agent — by releasing a series of cryptic, chilling teasers, each more indecipherable than the last. And if that film’s success is anything to go by, it’s not a bad strategy at all.
Presence also stars Eddy Maday, Julia Fox, and West Mulholland, and arrives in theaters on January 17.
