Horror Report

Day: December 10, 2014

  • The viral nature of the WOMAN IN BLACK 2

    Among the billions of posts and GIFs online right now, there are a few little creepy ones that stand out for me.. They all come from the Tumblr account for the upcoming January 2015 film THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2 . The site is http://womaninblack2.tumblr.com/.. you can find gems, like the one I feature with this post, and others including an arm reaching out to a woman from a baby carriage, freakish images of people screaming, and clever other ways the movie makers are getting their message out on social media.

    But I see these THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2 images being shared more than any others online in some time. Perhaps it’s because the there second clips are macabre and downright creepy—as the one featured here .. No matter how many loops over again it makes, each time I see it I still stop and get just a bit of a chill at the face on my screen..

    And that is smart for THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2 . People like GIFs.. the online community enjoys quick laughs and even quicker scares.. The movie is drumming up interesting simply by users freely passing around GIFs and other images with #SheNeverLeft as the tag…

    And that is how marketing is now.. A chimp with half a brain and an empty wallet can do it. But to do it effectively, you need to know your audience, your platform, and the style of people who would share images like those being given out by the makers of THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2 ..

    I remember a time when images online had copyrights and those copyrights mean something.. Big studios would sent out directives to websites —like mine—demanding a cease and desist on the publication of certain movie images.. But now? Now things are quite the alternate. Now studios and Hollywood executives are fine with their movie stills being shared. They even help. They upload to platforms hoping that users ‘reblog’ and make them go viral—all free, all fast. And all effective.

    Those cease and desists are long gone. Now we are encouraged to steal those images and post away—knowing the end result will add to the word of mouth advertising.

    Everything I just said is common sense and has been so for years. But i still get a little impressed when I come across a TUMBLR site or media site as effective as the one for THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2 .

    The movie has another thing going for it: It’s being released in January, it’s PG-13, and it comes after the Christmas season ends.. I personally think that January releases for horror are a good thing. By that point, we have had it up to our mistletoe in Christmas cheer and happiness. We want to be scared again.. and teenagers, those who will most likely make up the vast majority of the PG-13 release crowd on January 2 in the wide box office open for THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2, will eat this horror up.

    The distributor is RELATIVITY.. No word yet officially on the number of theaters the film debuts in. But it’s a wide release. And an even wider TUMBLR world of image sharing..

  • THE TIME PICK: EBOLA FIGHTERS

    TIME made its call.. the yearly ritual of waiting to see who a nearly irreverent magazine will decide was the most important person of the year is here again. This one was out of left field for me.. I did not expect them to choose a series of people, ‘the Ebola fighters,’ as the person that mattered.. I thought for sure TIME would focus in on the Ferguson story and name the ‘protester’ as the person—though they did that in 2011..  I was wrong.

    Perhaps if EBOLA gets really, really bad, next year’s person could be the EBOLA patient. And then TIME could just include another mirror on the cover like they did for the ‘You’ as the person of the year in 2006.

    This could also be a clever way to sell magazine—five covers?? I have always been aware of the theory that local newspapers utilize local sports to sell fishwrappers—every high school football player, baseball player, or track star buys up the issue when they are featured. As do their family members and friends.

    In this regard, TIME will sell at least 5 magazine this year, and maybe a few dozen more will buy because they know the person on the cover.

    But seriously..The reception for TIME’s choice has been positives, according to the TWITTER feeds I follow. People are roundly applauding TIME for picking brave people who fought Ebola and risked their own safety..

    I personally think this is a safe choice for TIME to make—one that will have no opponents and be affectionately thought of as a positive decision for the corporate magazine..Nurses and doctors could get the choice as person of the year every year.. As could police officers and others.

    I think my choice for person of the year—the one who most influenced the news and changed the course of history over the past 12 months (by definition, this is how TIME decides) would be: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the soccer playing Ph.D. who became the leader of ISIS.

     

  • Another civil emergency that was not

    Kentucky residents were sent messages to their cell phones stating that an ‘extreme alert’ was being made and that there was a civil emergency.. The text sent to thousands of cell phones to people in Southern Kentucky was ominous: “Prepare for action,” it said..

    The only problem–maybe thankfully–is that there was no emergency at all. The Kentucky Emergency Management office said that human errors caused the machine to sent out the false alert message. Nothing at all to worry about. No zombies. No attacks.. No nuclear Armageddon.

    Just a human making mistakes..

    Local ABC 36 affiliate in Kentucky reports that the emergency message was sent during a period of computer testing.

    The strangeness of the situation is only amplified by another incident that simultaneously occurred as the warning message was sent: The users of cell phones who got the odd alert also report hearing ‘low flying’ military helicopters during the alert period.. Alex Jones’ INFOWARS has a summation of these incidents,  including the linking of a Facebook post where people were actively laughing, mocking, and commenting about the situation.. One user comment to the post said,

    I was just walking outside the London Wal-Mart and thought I saw 9 or 10 zombies, each using a shopping cart to hold themselves up! I then went to Dairy Queen and saw 2 more that seemed to be working there. I was afraid for my life, they literally looked like characters from The Walking Dead! That’s it, it must be a zombie attack.

    Zombies abound..

    Regardless of why or how this alert generated a scary few minutes for people getting it, it’s certainly not the first time in 2014 that it happened. In October, during the TODAY SHOW segment on how to ‘take charge of your laundry,’ a weird emergency alert interrupted the program on television sets across America.. Thankfully no one really watches the TODAY SHOW, besides a few people forced to in car repair shops and doctors offices across America..

     

  • Fortean TIMES website goes offline today

    Fortean TIMES website goes offline today

    The website for the popular British publication FORTEAN TIMES is www.forteantimes.com.

    The HORROR REPORT has been reading this publication and a fan since we entered onto the Internet scene over 12 years ago.

    But now that website is in trouble..

    According to information being posted on the FORTEAN TIMES Facebook page, owner of the site Dennis Communications (*http://www.dennis.co.uk/) is closing down the website!

    Fortean Times typically updated daily with quick news bits and other weird headlines. But that has not occurred since November 20, causing speculation as to why the news outage on the site was happening.

    Just days ago, the Facebook page posted a message alluding to the seemingly strange silence:

    Apologies for the lack of news updates in the last couple of weeks. We are currently unable to access the FT website as Dennis Publishing are overhauling it. Hopefully back soon….

    But even odder was the thought that someone who was able to operate and update a website wasn’t able to obtain access to it..

    Them came this message posted only 17 minutes ago at the time the HORROR REPORT posts this:

    Yes, the daily news dearth continues.

    We have not been able to access the FT website for some time to update it.

    Latest is that, sadly, the old www.forteantimes.com website is being closed down by Dennis Publishing today – so visit it while you still can.

    Obviously, this is not exactly good news, but we are told that at least the message boards/forums are being kept and migrated over to a new FT subscriptions site, so at least all board users should still be able to carry on as normal.

    Meanwhile, we have been frantically trying to archive much of the content of the FT site so it is not lost and can hopefully be reposted somewhere at some point in the future.

    We still won’t have any way of accessing the new FT subs site until next year, it seems, so you’ll just have to bear with us for now.

    And don’t forget that our special Christmas issue is out tomorrow, which should help keep you all going!

    The British monthly magazine is devoted to providing information and news articles on the bizarre and strange, or the fortean. The magazine has also had a number of publishers during its time of life through present. The most recent, Dennis Publishing Ltd, took over in 2005.  The roots of the magazine–and name–can be traced to Charles Fort. People who know anything much about paranormal know who Charles Fort is: He was the American writer about anomalous phenomena ..

    Dennis Publishing boasts an arsenal of the print world on its website. It’s brands are voluminous.  But why shudder a website that has been a friend of users for years?

    These secrets lay somewhere on Cleveland Street in London today.
    Meanwhile, a screen cap of the final day of WWW.FORTEANTIMES.COM is here:

     

    fortean

    The HORROR REPORT has contacted both Fortean Times and Dennis Publishing and will follow up in the case of any more information becoming available..