The Witch Gets Terrifying New Trailer, Re-Release This Weekend

When the The Witch hit theaters back in mid-February, the horror film got good reviews from critics, but many maninstream moviegoers were put off by its artsy, talky tone. This weekend, The Witch is taking another shot at winning over horror buffs by widening the number of theaters in which it's playing and backing up the re-release with a red-band-ish trailer that emphasizes blood, profanity and in-your-face scares.

The first time around, The Witch failed to click with mass audiences despite its 90% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the film earned only $8.8 million in its opening weekend. That put it in fourth place for the week, behind the Christian historical drama Risen. Since then, The Witch has gone on to gross a total of $24 million, but its distributor clearly thinks it has the potential to earn much more.

The new trailer paints The Witch as a bloody, thrilling, edgy and irreverent horror-filled tale of demonic possession, and the NSFW marketing is in direct contradiction to the humorously devout tone of the week's biggest new release, God's Not Dead 2. The pitch attempts to position The Witch as an alternative for moviegoers who aren't interested in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice but who don't want a theatrical sermon, either.

There's the chance, however, that moviegoers could be angered by the misleading marketing, given that The Witch has been described as "chilling" and "slow-building," rather than the gory scream-fest that the trailer promises.