The titles of movie thrillers tend toward the quick, macho, boom! variety. “Firewall.” “Inside Man.” “The Sentinel.” Lofty, bold labels that resonate with gravity and danger and import.

Then there’s “Snakes on a Plane.”

Brian Finkelstein, a first-year student at Georgetown University Law School, saw the title of the upcoming movie and turned it into a joke. And the joke turned into Internet buzz, and the buzz has turned into a feverish parlor game, making Finkelstein a short-term celebrity.

“The title seemed so obvious. But then I became enamored of the title,” says Finkelstein, 26. To monitor the summer movie’s pre-release life, he started a Web site, Snakesonablog.com.

“I thought it would be a joke for me and my friends. I never thought it would generate this excitement,” Finkelstein says.

What he has inspired is a raucous conversation, mainly online, about a movie due in theaters Aug. 18. Other blogs appeared. New Line Cinema, the studio behind the horror-action flick, is paying attention. When the director went back to do more filming, he says he incorporated some of the blogger’s ideas. At least the tone of them.

“The manna-buzz the movie is getting right now is a nonstop joy ride. It’s a blessing,” says “Snakes” director David R. Ellis. The movie is easy to imagine: Samuel L. Jackson, an FBI agent, is escorting a witness on a plane over the Pacific Ocean. An assassin wants to kill the guy and decides to scare him and every other traveler with a crate of snakes.

“You don’t have to be hip to get this movie. Any person with the slightest bit of irony gets it,” says Jeffrey Wells, editor of the film news blog Hollywood-elsewhere.com.

That’s exactly what Ellis thought. “When they called me and told me the title, part of me said, ‘That is a genius title,’ and another part said, ‘You got to be kidding,'” recalls Ellis, who directed the thrillers “Final Destination 2” and “Cellular.”

It’s obvious, it’s fun, it’s chilling. Though Jackson may not be his usually menacing self, compared to his co-stars – 500 live snakes, from a 20-foot python to a 5-inch eyelash viper.

A Passenger contends with a slithery menace in the upcoming thriller Snakes

“No one is going to expect the subtle changes of ‘Shawshank Redemption,'” Finkelstein says.

Instant fan feedback

With lightning speed, Finkelstein’s Web site became a forum for satirical cartoons, poems, music videos, animated videos and submissions for trailers. The songs ranged from “Fly Snakes Fly” to “Baby, Baby, Baby (Shed Yo Skin).” And the posters took off on other movie products, suggesting “How Snakes Got Their Groove Back” and “Camels on a Submarine.”

“They have a market for their movie before the movie is done,” says Finkelstein, who is claiming 10,000 hits a day on the blog.

“We had changed the name of the film. ‘Snakes on a Plane’ – it was hard to get some actors to read it,” says Ellis. (The studio tried other titles, including “Pacific Air Flight 121.”) “Then we found out the Internet folks were really mad at us for changing it. Sam (Jackson) went on talks shows and said we are changing it back. We were listening to them.”

New Line last month ordered five more days of filming. In an unusual move, the studio said it was adding footage to get an R rating (as opposed to the more common practice of modifying racy scenes to earn a PG-13). The Internet fans wanted Jackson to sputter, “I want these (bleeping) snakes off the (bleeping) plane.”

No payola

Suspicious minds might wonder if New Line is paying Finkelstein to maintain his site as some sort of grass-roots marketing initiative, but he says that’s not the case. “They have given me absolutely nothing. In fact, I am in the hole for the Web domain and the design,” says Finkelstein, who did the design himself. “I do them for fun.” The studio confirms it has not paid him.

Finkelstein says he has had a few “private conversations” with New Line folks, and he always asks first if the movie studio is going to sue him. “They say no. But they let it be known they knew what was going on. It is to their benefit to let it continue,” he says.

And for Finkelstein to enjoy his spring moment. While he’s writing a term paper on the Fourth Amendment and curtilage, he’s been giving interviews to “Paula Zahn Now” on CNN and “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” on MSNBC. One of his early wishes was to attend the premiere, and he has 500 signatures on the Web site in support of his goal. “I have never been to a Hollywood premiere,” says Finkelstein. Ellis says he should stop worrying. His tickets are ready. “We talked about Brian in the marketing meeting, and we have got to fly him out,” says Ellis.

Snakes on the red carpet, naturally.