With stiff summer movie competition coming from box office heavyweights like Marvel, Star Wars, and Jurassic World, smaller films have to be a little more creative when it comes to their marketing. And the upcoming horror film Hereditary found the perfect way to strike an unsettling nerve to drum up hype for its June 8 release date.
The movie’s distributor, A24—the same company behind Lady Bird and The Disaster Artist—has launched an Etsy shop for the film that’s “run” by Charlie, the story's creepy main child character, played by Milly Shapiro.
According to /Film, Charlie makes dolls from stray items she finds—including, possibly, a bird head that’s featured in the trailer (and definitely not for the squeamish). Though none of Charlie's dolls are actually for sale on the store, you can see some that are “sold out” here.
The movie itself revolves around Charlie's mother, played by Toni Collette, a miniaturist artist who has to hold her family together after strange occurrences befall them in the wake of Charlie's grandmother's death. The Etsy page is also littered with glimpses into Charlie’s personality, such as her love of chocolate, her food allergies, and her workstation (again, the bird head). Oh, and her dead grandmother is the customer service rep, just in case the store wasn’t disturbing enough.
Hereditary hits theaters on June 8 but was already screened for certain critics back in January at Sundance. Let's just say it fared extremely well.