Here’s Looking at Film, Kid

As the credits rolled for Michael Bay’s Transformers this past July, I left the theater pondering gigantic robots beating the ever-loving slag out of other gigantic robots. But in the darkest recesses of my mind lurked something else, something a bit more … monstrous. You see, one of the trailers screened prior to Transformers caught my immediate attention and I couldn’t seem to get it out of my mind.

The teaser trailer was ambiguous and maddeningly unclear. A surprise party for some guy called Rob is crashed—literally—by a gargantuan creature. A deafening roar echoes in the distance. An explosion blossoms against the New York skyline, sending hunks of flaming debris whistling through the air. The party-goers make for the street just as Lady Liberty’s disembodied head is hurled down Broadway. The screen goes black.

No title. Just a release date, Jan. 18, 2008, and a name, J.J. Abrams.

This is viral marketing the likes of which we have not seen since Hitchcock and his infamous “no admittance after the house lights go down” policy with Psycho. Abrams is pushing the envelope here in terms of hype—and it’s working like a charm. Film fans the world over are scrambling, bickering, frantically searching for something, anything, that will shed some light on this mysterious monster movie known as 1-18-08.

Is it Gozilla? Lovecraft’s Cthulhu? Something else entirely? A spin-off of Lost, a sequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, the long rumored Voltron adaptation? Nobody knows. No leaks, no leads—nothing. Even Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News is at a loss. And Abrams, I think, fully intends on keeping it that way. As the weeks progress, so does the hype for this flick.

Several Web sites have been launched in preparation for the film’s release. A mysterious flash site with moveable photos appeared on the web a few months ago, followed by the corporate Web site for a Japanese drink called Slusho (speculators believe an ingredient in the fictional beverage will lead to the monster’s creation). Soon after, MySpace pages for the characters featured in the trailer popped up. It’s like a fanboy feeding frenzy and Abrams is tossing chum over the side of the boat by the bucketfuls.

But Abrams isn’t the only filmmaker utilizing the Internet as a marketing tool. We’ve got Christopher Nolan pulling the same stunt with the eagerly anticipated Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight. Aside from the film’s official site, there are several viral sites dotting cyberspace as well.

So what is viral marketing? Well, trusty Wikipedia defines it as “marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.”

But does this online viral marketing really work? Is the Internet a proper venue for advertisement? Think back to the summer of 1999 when The Blair Witch Project, an independent horror flick shot for peanuts, went on to dominate the box office with a whopping $140 million domestic gross. Now let’s jump forward to the summer of 2006, when the ultra-hyped Snakes on a Plane flopped with a measly $34 million.

I don’t think that 1-18-08 is doomed to cult-status with Snakes on a Plane. But I do think that the production is walking a very fine line—one that, if crossed, can lead to overexposure and disinterest. But I’m enjoying the mystery and intrigue surrounding 1-18-08. I like getting excited when a new snippet of info is released or when a new rumor arises. It harkens back to the days when filmmakers felt they had to entice their audience. At the very least, I’m enjoying it more than the “show a television spot every two minutes” mentality that seems to be plaguing the marketing of Hitman. Seriously, if I see one more ad for that stupid thing