Monterey Invites Fans Online to Enter ‘Meadowoods’

17 Apr, 2010 By: Billy Gil

For its May 4 DVD release of Meadowoods, Monterey Media opted to take the Blair Witch route and aggressively market its title online prior to the film’s release. According to Monterey’s marketing manager, Darrell Rae, that approach seems to be working.

“We started off basically with a viral campaign, not unlike Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch, where we put some videos out there online and started garnering views and sending people to our site,” Rae said. “What you put out there, the people have to like. They have to want to come back and send it on to their friends.”

People have liked what they’ve seen of Meadowoods, and it’s the right kind of people who make the difference in the horror world — the likes of fanboy sites Fangoria, Dread Central and Best-Horror-Movies. These curators of the horror movie world have taken to Meadowoods, with Fangoria’s editor, Michael Gingold, saying the film “exerts a primal hold on the emotions that keeps you watching, dreading what’s coming next.”

Through the push from those sites and through social networking and video sites such as YouTube, Daily Motion, Facebook and Twitter, Meadowoods’ fan base has grown on its mirco-site, — all without most of its fans having seen the film.

“Some of the horror sites have reviewed it, and the reviews have been great,” Rae said. “Our fans are looking forward to seeing it.”

The film is directed by Scott Phillips and stars a bevy of newcomers. It concerns three bored college kids who break up the monotony by kidnapping and torturing a victim in a homemade death chamber. The Meadowoods DVD also promotes the micro-site, so viewers can join the film’s fanbase on various social platforms.

“We get the movies to these guys or girls who are running these [horror] sites, and if they like it, their fans are following suit, generally, or at least want to view it to make their own opinion,” Rae said. “And back to Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, the spread of information can happen so quickly. These people tend to look at these specific sites as the go-to place for information on this genre. They really are the keepers of information.”