The scene in which the bedraggled Samara crawls out of a television set in The Ring has become iconic, an enduring image of the horror genre, so Paramount decided to stage it for real to promote upcoming sequel Rings.

The prank saw pedestrians lured into a TV showrooms and talked through the screens on offer; they just so happened to be showing stills of Samara and one of them was real.

Just as the would-be customers sense something is not right with one of the screens, the actress begins to crawl out of it, sending them fleeing from the shop and probably to Amazon (another blow for physical stores).

Rings is set 13 years after the events of the first film and the infamous video has gone viral online. The sequel sees Samara return - and this time she can send emails (remains to be seen if she is herself an attachment).