List of Internet Phenomena - Films

Films

• The Blair Witch Project – The film's producers used Internet marketing to create the impression that the documentary-style horror film featured real, as opposed to fictional, events.
• Brokeback Mountain – inspired many online parody trailers.
• Cloverfield – Paramount Pictures used a viral marketing campaign to promote this monster movie.
• Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus – The theatrical trailer released in mid-May 2009 became a viral hit, scoring over one million hits on MTV.com and another 300,000 hits on YouTube upon launch, prompting brisk pre-orders of the DVD.
• Re-cut/Mashup Movie Trailers – User-made trailers for established films, using scenes, voice-overs, and music, to alter the appearance of the film's true genre or meaning or to create a new, apparently seamless, film. Examples include casting the thriller-drama The Shining into a romantic comedy, or using footage from the respective films to create Robocop vs. Terminator.
• RedLetterMedia/Mr. Plinkett Reviews – Independent filmmaker Mike Stoklasa's long, in-depth critical reviews of the Star Wars prequel trilogy and several other large budget films, re-enacted under his crotchety "Mr. Plinkett" persona, became highly popular through word-of-mouth on the Internet.
• Snakes on a Plane – Attracted attention a year before its planned release, and before any promotional material was released, due to the film's working title, its seemingly absurd premise, and the piquing of actor Samuel L. Jackson's interest to work on the film. Producers of the film responded to the Internet buzz by adding several scenes and dialogue imagined by the fans.
• Marble Hornets is a documentary-style horror, suspense short film series based on alternate reality experiences of the Slender Man tale. It follows the story and discoveries made by student filmers of the Marble Hornets project, and has its basis in the tale before spinning off into an alternate reality game (ARG), which are interactive narratives that use the real world as their playing field, bringing the “what if?” ideas that drive many other creators of fiction. The series tends to utilize the “This Is Not A Game” aesthetic, in which the world created by the game should be as real as possible; therefore any location mentioned should be real, etc. Marble Hornets was instrumental in codifying parts of the Slender Man mythos, but is not part of the intercontinuity crossover that includes many of the blogs and vlogs that followed it, although MH does feature in other canons as either a chronicle of real events or a fictional series.
• The Room (2003) - Written, produced, directed, and starring Tommy Wiseau, the low budget independent film is considered one of the worst films ever made, but though social media and interest from comedians, gained a large number of fans of movie while further becoming a popular source for memes based on some of the poorly delivered lines in the movie, such as "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"
• Take This Lollipop (2011) is an interactive horror short film and Facebook app, written and directed by Jason Zada to personalize and underscore the dangers inherent in posting too much personal information about oneself on the Internet. Information gathered from a viewer's Facebook profile by the film's app, used once and then deleted, makes the film different for each viewer.