Analysis of promotional film posters for the genre of horror

Josh Wright

The background image is located within the center of the poster which allows for the audience to clearly see the image as it clearly stands out from from the dark background. The image itself is of a very iconic trap from the saw film series however at the time of the posters relapse this would of not been the case as no saw movies had come out at the time. The characters facial expression is emphasized by the light which shows a lot of her face, this allows for the audience to clearly identify a possible character of the film as well as instantly recognize the genre of the film.

The dark background helps to emphasize the dark atmosphere that the poster is trying to create. The background also allows the audience to recognize that the film is going to be a horror as the color black has mainly negative connotations such as death, evil and mystery . The film poster does not contain many colors and the image of the character in the center of the poster is also greyed out to add to the dark atmosphere of the poster.

The character in the center of the posters eyes are used to convey her emotions to who is viewing the poster as her mouth is covered by the trap, they make her look extremely shocked and distraught. The trap over the charters head is partly hidden to make the viewer interested in what it actually is and potentially go and see the film.

The title of the film is located in the bottom right of the film poster and the red color allows for the viewer to clearly identify the movie that this poster is advertising for. The font of the poster very plain and simple and allows the film poster to have a very clean look and not seem over crowded, below the title is the production name, company name and logo as well as the distributors and above the title is the name of the main actors which feature within the film, these are both not very important features of a film poster, however they do allow the viewer of the poster to make their own opinion of the film based on the distributors, production company's and actors reputation within the film industry.

The subtext is located at the top of the poster, this makes clearly visible and it will most likely be what the viewers of the poster are going to read first. The subtext clearly informs the audience of what genre the film poster is promoting and what type of horror the film will be, in this case a horror based around gore. It is also a rhetorical question, which will keep the audience thinking about the question its self and hopefully make them remember the poster and potentially go to see the film.

The main colour within this poster is black, which carries various connotations associated with the genre of horror such as death, evil, fear and mystery. Black also carries connotations of the ‘unknown’ this can be utilised as a technique to attract attention toward the film as viewers of the poster may be curious to find out about what happens within the film and will ultimately go and see the film. The black background also helps to create a clear contrast between the text on the poster as well as the main image, allowing the view to be able to clearly identify each feature of the poster quickly.

The main image of this poster which will be one of the first features which the viewer will identify is the iconic mask worn by the antagonist from the ‘Scream’ horror films. The image is located within the centre of the poster and clearly stands out due to the greyish white colour contrasting against the black background which is further emphasised by the light emitting of the mask on the left side, to further this the image takes up a large portion of the poster, both of these in turn make the poster catch individuals eyes as the image is very clear and will be able to be noticed from long distances away. The mask also gradually merges into the shape of a knife, this helps viewers of the poster easily identify the genre of the poster and also connotes to them what the film is going to most likely be about which is a serial killer, however it still leaves a lot of mystery surrounding the film in order to attract audiences.

The subtext of the film poster is all in red, which again carries connotations associated with the genre of horror such as blood, evil and war. The ‘New decade. New rules’ text gives insight as to what the film is going to be about, ‘New rules’ suggests that the antagonist may toy with characters in the movie and treat their lives as a game.

The colour pallet of this poster only contains a few colours (red, white and black), which gives the poster a very clean and simple look, this is good as many only look at film posters for a few seconds and that is all it takes to take in everything on this film poster.

The films titles is clearly displayed by the use of much larger, spacious, bold text when compared to other text on the poster. The films title itself gives the view insight as to what genre the film is as horror films are associated with making audiences ‘scream’. The creators have also replaced the ‘A’ in the tile with a ‘4’ in red as opposed to white, most likely so that the viewer can identify that this is the film series 4th instalment while keeping the posters very simple and clean look. The ‘M’ has a long pointed bottom, representing a knife, this ties into to the knife merged with the mask and conveys that the film is going to be in the sub genre of slasher horrors.