Dear People In Charge of Marketing Poltergeist: Please Stop Scaring Me

poltergeist clown 2015

Do you have a fear of clowns? Or dolls? Or clown dolls? Or demonic clown dolls that come to life and apparently attack your soul? You do? Well, then this is not going to be a good couple of months for you. Because the return of Poltergeist in theaters this July means two more months of the creepy clown doll that is appearing on all their marketing material.

I understand the desire to create unsettling marketing for horror movies…the movie is meant to scare people. But if you don’t want to see Poltergeist or aren’t in the mood to be scared in your everyday life…well touch luck. This creepy clown doll is still going to be inflicted on you throughout the day when you least expect it. Usually at an inopportune times. For example, the video movie posters which appear above subway stations that have that clown pop up on unexpected passersby…or, when you’re about to walk down the stairs of the subway, look up, get scared, and almost fall down. Or when you’re looking something up on the internet and suddenly an image appears on your screen (or even worse, video of the doll attacking a child). Or when you’re walking through a theater lobby with popcorn and suddenly a hologram movie poster is in front of you and the doll seems to move and scares you so badly you drop the food you just spent $5 on, embarrassing yourself in front of random strangers and making your friends fear for your well-being.

But to be walking around, minding your own business, and suddenly scared by marketing seems unfair to the general public

The truth is, if these scares were happening in a movie theater where there is an expectation that you could be watching a trailer for a horror movie, you can brace yourself for some jump scares. But to be walking around, minding your own business, and suddenly scared by marketing seems unfair to the general public. I mean come on, the people in charge of this campaign know clowns are terrifying to a large segment of the population…that is why they’re doing this.

Am I being sensitive? Absolutely! I find clowns scary, and I find clown figurines even scarier. I’m exposing my terror of something for the good of the public. Because I’m not the only one who feels this way about clown dolls. If this were happening occasionally in my every day life, I wouldn’t mind…I’d just say, “I don’t have the right not to be scared, but it’s my problem.” But the marketing is ALL OVER the place, and will just increasing the closer we get to the movie release date. And I’m embarrassed to say…I’m not getting used to the images…in fact, the image of that clown has imprinted and I can scare myself just by thinking about it (I’m scaring myself now). And, I’m not the only person who feels this way about this marketing campaign. I tell people, look up the movie poster…they do and they tell me, “yeah, that is terrifying.” I found out a little girl saw that movie theater poster with the hologram and started crying because of it, which I’m sure ruined whatever nice experience she had just had seeing Paddington or the Spongebob movie.

So marketing people behind this campaign, I’m asking from the heart, please stop. I’d consider it a personal favor. And if this personal plea does not motivate you to change, I will throw out one more that appeal to you for a different reason. I will not be seeing this movie now. I was planning to see it before because I liked the first one movie (I could deal with the doll scare in the movie) and will always see Sam Rockwell in stuff. But I honestly don’t think I can handle, and don’t want to, see this movie anymore, and others might feel the same way. Because it is way different to go in looking for a scare than it is to constantly getting scared in everyday life.

That’s something jerks do.

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Lesley Coffin is a feature editor for FF2media and has also written the books Lew Ayres: Hollywood Conscientious Objector (2012) and Hitchcock's Stars (2014), and currently writing a third book. Follow on twitter @filmbiographer for thoughts on movies and cat pictures.
Lesley Coffin
Lesley Coffin
Lesley Coffin is a feature editor for FF2media and has also written the books Lew Ayres: Hollywood Conscientious Objector (2012) and Hitchcock's Stars (2014), and currently writing a third book. Follow on twitter @filmbiographer for thoughts on movies and cat pictures.