Paranormal Activity (the original film, not the sub-par sequels) changed the game back in ’09. After the insane thrills of The Blair Witch Project a decade earlier, director Oren Peli’s micro-budget horror film instilled new life in the dormant found-footage genre.
We are now only a week away from the fifth and allegedly final installment in the series, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. And the people in charge of the marketing have come up with one of the most unique viral campaigns in recent memory.
They set up the original movie’s house, the one where the aforementioned paranormal activity takes place as a real house up for sale. They organised an open house and invited prospective buyers to come check it out. Only, they’d rigged the entire place up with practical effects.
Watch the video here
The reactions they get are nothing short of phenomenal. As the buyers go from room to room, weird stuff starts happening. Chandeliers start swinging, paintings fall from the walls, the microwave flickers, and in a perfectly terrifying finale, the mirror in the upstairs bathroom cracks violently as the buyers, who by now are completely rattled, enter it.
{{/usCountry}}The reactions they get are nothing short of phenomenal. As the buyers go from room to room, weird stuff starts happening. Chandeliers start swinging, paintings fall from the walls, the microwave flickers, and in a perfectly terrifying finale, the mirror in the upstairs bathroom cracks violently as the buyers, who by now are completely rattled, enter it.
{{/usCountry}}Fans of the original movie will remember the house’s layout and how nerve-wracking the whole experience was. They will also remember the series’ other unique viral campaigns where they go and shoot reactions of the audience watching the movie for the first time, scared senseless.
Watch one here
The cynic inside you might question the authenticity of this video, but something tells us those reactions can’t be faked.
Paranormal Activity was made on a budget of $15,000 and went on to become the breakout word-of-mouth hit of 2009, earning $193 million by the end of its run.
But this video succeeds in what it set out to do: Make a dying franchise relevant again. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension promises to solve all the mysteries of the franchise as it further delves into the mythology. It is set to arrive on October 23 in the US.
Watch the trailer for Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension here