One major asset that the “Longlegs” marketing team had on their side was a wealth of rave reviews (including one from /Film) offering tantalizing quotes like “The best serial killer movie since ‘The Silence of the Lambs'” and “The scariest film of the decade.” The trailers were punctuated with these quotes, along with a coveted 100% Rotten Tomatoes score (it’s since dropped to 87%, but that’s nothing to be sniffed at).

Jumping off from the hype about how terrifying “Longlegs” is, the marketing emphasized the promise of good old-fashioned cinema scares. One promo included a recording of Monroe’s heartbeat hitting 170 bpm the first time she shot a scene with Cage in makeup as Longlegs. The excellent teasers and trailers gave a taste of what the film had to offer while giving away very little about the actual plot (having seen it myself just yesterday, a major element of the story came as a total surprise). The first teaser, simply titled “You’ve got the teeth of the hydra upon you,” took a cue from the original trailers for “Alien” by simply showing quick cuts of terrifying moments with no dialogue.

Horror, perhaps more than any other genre, can go from rags to riches with the right marketing campaign. We saw it happen with “The Blair Witch Project” 25 years ago, and more recently with movies like “Smile” and “M3GAN.” In August, we’ll find out if Neon’s next horror movie — “Cuckoo,” starring Hunter Schafer and also boasting an absolutely wicked trailer — can give the studio a hat trick of horror hits in 2024.