To push its new supercharged, off-road F-150 Raptor R, Ford is using a rabid wolf, rattlesnakes, a scorpion, bats—and a monster.

Those creatures star in a new video for the pickup that is meant to look more like a trailer for a horror movie than an ad. The two-minute film, called "Scary Fast,” comes from Wieden+Kennedy New York. The star of the video is the Raptor R, which has a 5.2-liter supercharged V8 engine that Ford says achieves 700 horsepower. 

The ad shows a helmet-wearing man driving the pickup through the desert night at high speeds, evading hazards like the wolf and rattlesnakes, as well as a burning cactus and a monster, which at one point grips the truck’s side mirror. 

The ad will air nationally in theaters in advance of the Jordan Peele horror movie "Nope." The media buy also includes YouTube and Hulu. The ad was directed by Lauren Sick, whose recent work includes the dark music video for Dove Cameron’s “Boyfriend.” 

The Ford ad was shot in the style of grindhouse movies, a term associated with violent flicks. The automaker began teasing the video on social media last week with images meant to look like movie posters.

The approach is meant to appeal to the niche audience of off-road pickup enthusiasts. But with the polished production and placement before mainstream movies, Ford is also casting a wider net, seeking to burnish its brand image with those who might not buy a Raptor but could be drawn to the automaker’s broader lineup of performance vehicles.

It is “an igniting point to engage some interest about the Ford brand and some of the cool products we’ve got out there,” said David Rodriguez, a Ford marketing communication manager. The horror flick approach was used because “there is a thrilling experience behind the wheel of this particular product and the notion of getting into this psychological thriller space we thought was a natural extension,” he said.

The campaign also includes influencer marketing from people well-known among auto racing enthusiasts, including off-road racer Christopher Polvoorde and former Nascar driver Tony Stewart.

The Raptor is modeled after versions that compete in the Baja 1000, the competitive desert race held in Baja California, Mexico. 

The ad was shot at night in the Utah desert. Ford used real animals, rather than CGI versions of the critters. The crew equipped drones and desert dune buggies with cameras to capture closeups of the Raptor rumbling through the landscape at high speeds to give it a “Mad Max” feel, Rodriguez said.

“One of the cool things was hearing the engine perform at 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning out in the desert,” he said.

While the F-150 Raptor model has been around for years, Ford is billing its newest version as the “most extreme high-performance offroad desert Raptor yet.” 

The engine is an optimized version of what has been used in Ford’s Mustang Shelby GT500. Ford in a press release describes it as “the most torque-dense supercharged V8 yet in a production pickup.” The F-150 Raptor R is seen as a competitor to the Ram 150 TRX.