Sometimes the secret to promoting a new movie is an actual secret. The latest example, You Can See Everything, is taking that strategy to an extreme. And it’s no spoiler to say that it’s working, at least so far.
After all, few would have predicted that arguably the buzziest property to emerge from the Telluride Film Festival would be a three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. The infamous Theranos founder and the story of her fraud convictions have already been the subject of two documentaries and a fictionalized Hulu series.
But the makers of You Can See Everything—notably including marketing-savvy indie studio A24—are certainly acting like they’ve got something truly novel here. The film debuted at a secrecy-soaked screening, where the audience wasn’t told what they’d be seeing until they’d surrendered their phones and taken their seats.
The immediate burst of attention owes much to this air of mystery, and the sense that the movie defies easy explanation. The premise is intriguing, but also somewhat puzzling: For some reason Holmes gave considerable access in the weeks before her incarceration to entertainer Nathan Fielder, best known for the docu-comedy series Nathan for You. (“I’m really struggling to this day to understand what I experienced,” Fielder mused in a Q&A session after the Telluride screening.)
According to Variety, the general suspense vibe “only intensified” as the screening went on. “There’s also a surprise plot point that shouldn’t be spoiled,” The New York Times reported.
But You Can See Everything is not the first project to rely on a “no spoilers!” marketing strategy. In fact, A24 just did something similar with The Drama—an apparent rom-com with a dark twist that moviegoers weren’t supposed to reveal. And you can find examples going back decades.
In the early 1990s, Miramax, the A24 of its time, marketed The Crying Game as a movie with a secret, asking reviewers not to reveal the plot twist that turned what seemed to be a political thriller into something quite different. It grossed more than $70 million. (It should be noted that The Crying Game’s twist involved gender identity, treated with a sensational tone that hasn’t aged well.)
Of course, “no spoilers” is an element of drama in general. (“I am your father!”) But finding creative ways to center mystery as a marketing tactic may be most closely associated with the horror genre. The Blair Witch Project skillfully cultivated confusion over whether it was created from actual found footage; the first trailer for Cloverfield sparked viral attention even though, or because, it didn’t even name the film; and so on.
A teaser for You Can See Everything dropped to coincide with the Telluride hype, and linked to by Holmes’s X account, skips any pretense of plot disclosure or narrative explanation—and actually comes across a bit like a horror film preview. It consists mostly of a somewhat unnerving minute-plus close-up of an unblinking Holmes assuring Fielder that she’s not deceiving him, over a spare and ominous music bed; the clip “will make your blood run cold,” the New York Post opined. It also has more than 5 million views, and certainly makes you wonder what on earth is going on.
That said, the secrecy strategy doesn’t always work. In the early 2010s, Disney launched what it hoped would be the first of multiple films based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs interplanetary adventure novel. The film was titled John Carter, after the main character, in a strategy that intentionally skipped the Martian-war angle to draw audiences curious about who John Carter might be. Nobody cared.
And obviously there’s the risk that if the secrets don’t live up the hype, the word will travel fast. What matters isn’t announcing that there is a secret. It’s what happens next, and whether it makes the audience feel that protecting the secret is a form of participation.
The Crying Game and other successful examples of “secret” marketing in effect encouraged viewers to become part of the film’s distribution system: They went to see it partly so they could understand the conversation everyone else was having. You Can See Everything definitely started that conversation. Now it’s up to audiences to determine how, or if, it spreads.