MOVIEPOSTERANALYSIS

HORROR

This quote acts as praise for the director Danny Boyle and also helps to inform the audience of the film’s genre, using words such as ‘horror’, ‘scary’, and ‘hell’. 

This image threshold of London and the iconic Big Ben acts as a mise en scene and setting for the film. The ‘scratchy’ effect over the whole poster also connotes a dirty, broken environment which is typical of a zombie film. 

This sell Danny Boyle as the “auteur” director of the film. It indicates that if you like his other films, you will also enjoy this one. This provides excellent advertising. 

This is the film title. The audience can tell this by the way that the text is conventionally centred in the middle of the poster. The iconic radiation symbol acts as a logo for the film that is also a repeated motif throughout the advertisement and the production itself. This makes for effective branding. 

The eyes ‘stare’ at the audience with direct mode of address, which naturally gets their attention. The full view of the iris which is a supernatural colour, connotes an uncanny value that would expectedly ‘creep out’ any normal person. This stare causes uncomforting feelings that the audience would want to expect from the horror genre. The repeated radiation symbol motif also exists faintly in the pupils of the eyes. 

Media convergence gets the audience more involved in the film release. It usually results in them sharing it with friends on social networks. This is a great marketing technique which widens the audience. 

The colour red connotes blood, violence, danger, etc. and the colour black connotes death, darkness, despair, etc. These are very stereotypical colours used to advertise a horror film. White usually connotes purity, but in this case it is just used to juxtapose the type against the contrasting background. 

The ‘YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED’ is a typical tagline for the film. It suggests to the audience that the horror of death is inevitable and it also links cleverly to the film release date. This link causes the audience to think that the film will ‘scare them to death’ and its release will ‘be their end’. 

Refers to the ‘auteur’ which suggests that if the audience liked the book they will enjoy the film too. The term ‘bestseller’ creates intangible value even for an audience that is unfamiliar with the story.  

The image of the woman’s face is a representation of both death and a lamb. The white signifies the pale skin of a dead person and also the white colour of a lamb. The black and white also strikingly juxtapose each other, creating an effectively interesting visual.  This is an image of the Death’s-head Hawkmoth, which connotes death and represents the ‘silencing’ of the lamb, because it covers the woman’s mouth. The term ‘lamb’ refers to the victimized women in the film who are murdered and butchered much like a lamb. This image also plays on the basic fear of insects that a mass audience will have.  The billing blocks are the actors names, because in this case they are more significant and add more intangible value than the director’s name would. This attracts the actors’ existing fan base.  

The direct gaze draws in the attention of the audience and the red eyes have creepy connotations, because the eyes are very human but their colour is not, which gives this image uncanny value. This unsettles the audience, but also informs them of the movie genre because of signified emotions which are conventional to the horror genre.  The softened image gradient is actually quite

stereotypically feminine, but it also signifies ‘ghostly’ qualities. Both female victim roles and ghost-like imagery is conventional of the horror genre.   The title of the film. It is unconventionally in a lowercase font, which was likely intentional as a way to emphasize the word ‘silence’, because an audience would typically associate an uppercase font with a loud speaking voice. The orange colour is the same as the Hawkmoth’s, meaning the audience is expected to make an association between the two, because it is likely to alter the path in which they read the poster.

This image combines a cabin with the iconic Rubik’s Cube puzzle, which cleverly communicates the unique selling point of this film’s narrative. This USP would be the cross genre between horror and mystery sci-fi. The cabin is a conventional setting for the horror genre, but the Rubik’s Cube-like structure signifies puzzles and mystery, and the lighting of the windows is white and typically supernatural or sci-fi-like.

Billing blocks with the main casts’ names. This are largely printed and conventionally composed at the top of the poster so that the actors’ existing fan bases can clearly see them. These ‘big names’ add intangible value to the film and increase the audiences high expectations of the film, resulting in a ‘hyped up’ film.

Forest Background fading to white is unconventional for a horror movie poster, because it signifies a cleaner and purer environment.

This is a reference to the horror industry and how it’s audience is able to predict most narratives, because many narrative types and styles have been recycled by countless producers. This tagline is suggesting that this film takes those stereotypes and adds a twist, so that the audience can’t predict the story. This almost falls into the parody horror category, but the narrative is still relatively serious, much like the movie Scream in the 90’s. 

These five characters listed are all stereotypes of teenagers, one most conventional to the horror genre would be ‘the virgin’, otherwise known as the final girl who would conventionally survive the horror that takes place in the film. This poster actually flaunts it’s stereotypes to the reader, to make them think they know it’ll be another typical horror film. The audience then link this to the unconventional plot that it claims to have when you read the tagline. It connotes a bold statement of originality, achieved through a cross genre narrative that is similar to a parody horror.

The title of the film is in a red all caps serif font that is slightly distorted, which is conventional to a fantasy horror. The red connotes danger, and the serif font and distortion connote an aged feel.