Neuro-Marketing of Horror Films: Trends and Ethical-Legal Implications

This article explores the transformation of horror film marketing between 2023 and 2025 amid a shift from traditional visual representations of fear to the embodied elicitation of fear and the measurement of audience responses. Contemporary horror campaigns increasingly employ neuromarketing and performative practices that position the audience not only as the target of advertising but also as a source of biometric data, thereby making physiological responses an integral part of media production. The limited theoretical engagement with these practices in cultural studies and media philosophy calls for a systematic analysis. The aim of the article is to identify the cultural, phenomenological, and ethical and legal foundations of horror film neuromarketing through an analysis of the promotional campaigns for “Evil Dead Rise” (2023), “Smile 2” (2024), “Together” (2025), and “Long Walk” (2025). The study shows that contemporary horror marketing practices reflect a broadening of promotional strategies: alongside on-screen representations of fear, these strategies increasingly engage the audience’s body. Technologies such as GSR, EEG, eye-tracking, pupillometry, facial expression recognition, and immersive performative formats allow affective and physiological responses to be recorded, thereby transforming them into valuable marketing tools and quantifiable media resources. The study concludes that these practices heighten cinematic immersion while also creating risks of manipulation, desubjectivation, and breaches of standards governing the processing of biometric data. The article is intended for film and media researchers, scholars in cultural studies, philosophers, marketing professionals, and specialists in the legal regulation of digital technologies.