Well, This ‘Beguiled’ Social Media Campaign Is… Certainly Something

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The marketing of movies is a tricky bit of business, particularly in this watch-your-peak-TV-on-your-phone-while-you’re-fidget-spinning-and-Snapchatting age, so it’s hard to begrudge those who have to hype up old-fashioned feature motion pictures with a bit of selective selling. There are consequences – take, for example, last weekend’s marvelous It Comes at Night , an unsettling thriller about paranoia and fear that was sold like a bonus episode of The Walking Dead, resulting in reports of heavy walkouts and a CinemaScore, which polls opening weekend moviegoers, of D. (For context, Boogie Nights got a CinemaScore of C, The Royal Tenenbaums got a C-, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon got an A, so fuck CinemaScore.) As a result, there was much second-guessing of that campaign over the weekend, to which the folks selling The Beguiled have apparently responded with a “Hold my beer.”

The Beguiled is Sofia Coppola’s new remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood vehicle directed by Don Siegel. I’ve seen it, and it’s great – a moody, contemplative tone poem about sexual repression and dynamics, in which an injured Union soldier, recovering from his wounds at a girl’s boarding school deep behind enemy lines, sets about psychologically and physically seducing most of the women who are caring for him, to his eventual regret. Or, as the movie’s promoted tweets put it, they turn into a bunch of #VengefulBitches, what’s uuuuuupppp!!!!!

Yes, that’s really a GIF for the movie featuring the How I Met Your Mother-esque tagline “SISTERS BEFORE MISTERS.” But wait, there’s more! Nicole Kidman plays Mrs. Fanrsworth, the prim and proper matriarch of the school, overseeing her staff and students with a firm hand. Or, put another way, HEAD BITCH IN CHARGE, I’M SCREAMING, WHAT WHAAAAAAAAT:

Seriously, what the fuck is going on with this campaign.

The best we can figure is that the team that promoted Coppola’s The Bling Ring was rehired to take on this one, but there was some sort of miscommunication and they think they’re branding a campaign for a Bling Ring re-release. That’s about the only explanation for this one:

Anyway, you can see these Good Girls Go Bad Lipstick Emoji when The Beguiled hits theaters later this month.