Horror Flick’s Brilliant Marketing Stunt – Prankvertisement At Its Best

“Devil’s Due” is low-budget horror movie. It tells the story of a couple on honeymoon that lose track of one night. Once home, they find out that the wife is pregnant. The husband records the earlier-than-planned pregnancy on camera. He notices that the mother-to-be is changing dramatically – and not for the better. Over the months, it becomes clear that dark forces are at work. (Yes, I know, it sounds a lot like Rosemary’s Baby”)

Promoting a low-budget movie such as this one is an uphill battle. Marketing a blockbuster is a lot easier - advertisements, movie trailers, and guest appearances of the actors in talk shows are just a few examples of the PR tools that movie studios use. So what can small or indie movie makers do? Harness the power of Internet!

The makers of the flick engaged the services of Thinkmodo, a NY-based viral video marketing agency. They came up with a great PR stunt. They built a stroller that could be controlled remotely and put a screaming robot infant inside. They steered the stroller through the streets of NY. Pedestrians heard a child crying from the seemingly unattended stroller and went to check. Once they approached, the robot demon child popped up and started screaming at them.

The video quickly went viral on Internet and national as well as international TV stations showed the clip.
Reviews of the movie (premiered on January 17, 2014) were lukewarm. Rotten Tomatoes rated it “Derivative and mostly uninspired”. The LA Times wrote: "Devil's Due' an inept take on Rosemary's Baby".

The horror movie may not be remebered as a film classic, but it did write marketing history!