Movies Are Becoming Apps With “Haunting Melissa”

Write it down in the history books apps: Haunting Melissa has pioneered a new way of storytelling!  A first of its kind “movie-in-an-app”, this is a straight-up brilliant way to entertain.  You should download it, if for no other reason than to one day say that you were among the first to experience a new wave of entertainment.

Brought to us by the producer of Mullholland Drive and The Ring (Neal Edelstein with Hooked Digital Media), Haunting Melissa is a ghost story told on our mobile devices. However, the content is not quickly consumed like a normal movie.  Think of this kind of like your favorite episodic TV show, without the ability of marathoning through on your DVR.  Instead, you must wait for the highly anticipated chapters, which are revealed through push notifications.

Released just a week ago, Haunting Melissa remains in the top 10 free Entertainment App downloads on the iTunes store.  Last I checked, it was ranked above HBO GO and sits among all-stars like Hulu Plus and Netflix.

The app tells the mysterious story about a young woman named Melissa Strogue. Possibly unintentional, but her name feels like an homage to Laurie Strode – history’s first “Final Girl” from horror classic, Halloween.  Although the Final Girl is usually the one who lives, I honestly don’t know what happens to Melissa.  However, the genre trope is evident as we find ourselves first identifying with unusual circumstances, and then Melissa herself as she begins to hear strange voices while recovering from her mother’s descent into madness and death.

What I find most intriguing about Haunting Melissa is the platform.  We’re used to getting instant gratification from apps, but by turning that concept on its head and using our built-in expectations of our mobile devices to the app’s advantage, Haunting Melissa is incredibly clever and certainly feeds our desire by delivering content to the audience at totally unpredictable intervals while adding to the suspense and mystery of the overall story itself.

The app is free to download with the first chapter.  The second chapter is also free if you share it on Facebook.  After that, you can buy a season pass which will give you all chapters when they’re made available.  Connect with Haunting Melissa communities to share theories on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOK0eZPWWRU?rel=0