This week we watched Blacula and I enjoyed the screening and thought that the film was very good overall. It isn’t one of my favorite horror movies, but it is a film that I could find enjoyment out of watching over and over again. The only vampire movies I have seen before this were the Twilight series, and the Blade series. I still despise the Twilight series and I like watching the Blade series every so often just because it is based off a comic book, but Blacula was different and I enjoyed every minute of it. I think the only aspect of the film that I didn’t like was the romantic portion of it, and I will explain that later.

But first, one of the readings that caught my attention this week was an article about marketing and the reasoning is that I have noticed many films that were poorly advertised, but gained some sort of following. But there is a film that is coming out in a few weeks that I think has some of the best marketing and is probably going to benefit off of this. The film that I am talking about is The Hunt, and this film has some of the most unique marketing that I have ever seen. The story behind this film is that it was going to be released into theaters on September 27, 2019, but the studio behind the film had to cancel its release because it was receiving a lot of controversy because of what the film depicts, and that is the wealthy elite kidnapping and hunting down lower class citizens. The studio also canceled the release because of two mass shootings that happened around that time and also received criticism from Trump and the studio said now wasn’t the time to release the film. But that all changed on February 11th, 2020 when the studio decided to release the film on March 13th, 2020. Since it is being released, the marketing has completely changed for the film. Before the film was being marketed as a horror movie and now it is being advertised as the most talked about film from last year that no one has seen yet. Now I find this interesting because the marketing for the film has completely changed because of the canceled release and it is probably going to benefit off of this release and gain a following. All of this because of marketing and publicity. Also, I do plan on trying to see this film when it does come out in a few weeks.

Now for why I didn’t like the romantic portion of Blacula. The reasoning is because I always find it weird to insert a romance into a horror or a monster movie. By including a romance in a movie, the film loses that scare factor to me and has the potential to be worse because of it. For me, romance and horror do not mix in movies, the romance is usually included to appease the general public in order to gain more money in the box office. I have despised the Twilight franchise because it has ruined the image of vampires and has made them not scary to the general public. I am hoping that Marvel Studios Blade, which is going to star Mahershal Ali can bring back respect to vampires that have been lost because of films like Twilight and make vampires scary again.