Too Spoilery, Too Soon?
Friday, April 1, 2016 at 9:13AM 
How soon is too soon for spoilers?
It's hard to keep the lid on plot details of any film with instant reactions available on Twitter and spreading rapidly. You can try to avoid reading reviews and recaps, but what about the times that a film's marketing campaign gives away too much? It's frustrating to see any new trailer that foretells too much plot, but is it okay to be open with story beats if we've already had time to experience the film?
Recently, 10 Cloverfield Lane has been among the best at teasing us with what it had in store. It's very title alone suggests something more than meets the eye, but it's minimal trailers and posters never dipped more than a toe into the plot elements or scares in this pop-up mini-event movie. Announcing its presence a mere two months before release and never revealing much more was a bold and brave marketing risk that hopefully more studios will be willing to take in the future, for it paid off in spades for the viewing experience.
Less elusive, but still similarly slim on the plot, The Witch came out in February after a year on the festival circuit and a solid block of enticing pre-release materials. General audiences were only promised a chilling horror and remained unspoiled about how it would conclude. The film is getting another push this weekend (to 666 theatres) in the hopes of passing Ex Machina as distributor a24's highest grosser. If you haven't seen it yet, you're missing one of the best of the year thus far!
But to coincide with 10 Cloverfield Lane's international rollout and this final expansion for The Witch, there are a new poster and trailer that kick the bucket into full spoiler territory. If you haven't seen either yet and want to remain unspoiled, stop right here. MAJOR SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP...
The international poster shows in no uncertain terms that this Cloverfield installment does indeed take place during an alien invasion. This element was kept completely out of the American mystery box marketing and made for a fun third act reveal moments before the credits rolled. International audiences being sold the film on an image like this are being promised a different experience than what the film delivers - the sci-fi twist was truly just a coda on a film driven moreso by intimate thrills and slow-built tension. Not to mention the miss out on the rare joy of not knowing every story beat the way stateside audiences got to enjoy this film!
It also is kind of a buzzkill for the film's most enjoyable component: Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character arc. She doesn't enter the film as a woman equipped to single-handedly take on an alien spaceship, but slowly becomes a full-on action hero after the twists and turns in the bunker with the sinister John Goodman. As she's backed further and further into a corner she comes out swinging, which makes the alien confrontation twist all the more rewarding and thrilling. Seeing this image to spoil the journey's endpoint has to dampen some of the impact of Winstead's ace performance.
But if narrative impact is lessened for 10 Cloverfield Lane by the above poster, then this rerelease trailer for The Witch takes it to a whole other level.
In short order, the trailer delivers the most grisly and disturbing images from the film completely free of context - most of the footage from the film's third act, to boot. It's a barrage of blood and the most memorable scares that still misses the film's bone-chilling nature. One wonders if the gruesomeness is to curb the unfair reputation of "pretentious and boring" that The Witch has received. This trailer isn't quite a misdirection, but there is something essential in the film's slow build to violence that feels compromised.
However, if these marketing materials ruin the experience for the uninitiated, they've definitely renewed interest in this already sold fan. Perhaps this weekend's light release schedule makes for the perfect chance for a revisit.
Do you think this marketing to Too Spoilery, Too Soon? How long should we try to preserve such thrills for new audiences?
Reader Comments (10)
I couldn't read the second half of this article because i haven't seen 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE yet. Guess i should go today before i see the new poster. :) but YIKES on what The Witch is doing.... although i guess the film will survive. I've seen it 3 times and i knew what was going to happen in viewings 2 and 3 and still loved.
I'm the kind of watcher who would devour every review (and wikipedia article) before actually seeing the movie cause I want to know what I am getting into lol, so spoiler is welcome to me.
There are still people went bonkers when they found out that The Baker's Wife from Into the Woods died before seeing the musical, so God knows how long we can keep those plot twists.
I can understand the desire on A24's part to go in a different direction in the marketing for The Witch given how it's initial release was received by the "horror community", but that trailer... with so many little tweaks it would be okay, but that it needs SO MANY little tweaks is the problem. It spoils practically EVERYTHING, and most of what makes a horror film scary is not knowing what's lurking around the (dark) corner.
Likewise, I can understand the desire to push the "bigger" aspects of 10 Cloverfield Lane to an international audience for whom the premise and cast aren't big sells in and of themselves the way they are in the US. But to do so is practically begging for backlash when people realize that what's on the poster is literally only the last 10-15 minutes of the movie (and, frankly, a "twist" that I could see coming and was thus partially waiting for).
Nathaniel - 10 CLOVERFIELD LN is such a fun film that I'm honestly straining to remember the qualms I had about it. Winstead and Goodman are both top notch, and have intriguing chemistry. SOLID RECOMMEND
Denny - 100%! It's all of the pieces and none of the context that actually make the film as scary as it is. It's not just a spoilers trailer, it's a misleading one
Oh, man. I couldn't help but read the article and now I know spoilers from Cloverfiled =/
I think that The Witch trailer was more for the people who already saw it, to get them to see it again. That 10CL poster and trailer are really bad, though
Also these are kinda very focused on 'it opened in US, so screw it'. I haven't seen The Witch yet, but I read the script. Still I am kinda pissed off I saw some of the stuff in promo material before I get the chance to see it in the actual movie
I hated the twist in " 10 Cloverfield Lane" it was if someone had switched reel and I was now watching scenes from a Michael Bay movie. And yeah that poster shows just that- "The Witch "trailer seems to be aimed at the Fangoria horror crowd- and yeah it gives way to much of the films best shocks away.
That trailer for The Witch is stupid in many ways but given that it (presumably) isn't meant to actually play before movies in theaters my tolerance level for its spoilers is maybe different than it otherwise would be. It seems to be playing into some of the meme's surrounding the movie which is... not really the tone I would go for, but A24 is a pretty experimental distributor in general so I think I'd given them a bit of Leeway.
As for 10 Cloverfield Way... what they're doing there is probably motivated by the fact that the movie isn't doing great at the American box office (it's doing alright, but given that it isn't outgrossing the original Cloverfield despite inflation it's probably disappointing) and they want to try something else with their second go-around.
The Witch plays up the horror aspects too much in the trailer -- it's at least half domestic and religious drama. A liked it, but a lot of the people in the theatre were expecting something else, and I think that's fair.
I saw Paramount Australia's instagram feed post this spoiler poster a couple of weeks ago and was like "well, i guess they're not hiding that anymore." So silly, I guess they're trying to drum up a few extra bucks now that the film has been out for a couple of weeks.