Analysis of Horror Film Posters

The poster contains the title of the film, which is ’30 days of night’. The title is written in red, which is usually associated with death, blood and passion. The font looks like fingernails have scraped it, giving an intense, horrific atmosphere.
We are told when the film is going to be out in cinemas, which is in October. This is significant because Halloween is in October, so it adds to the film being of horror genre.

The image is of a man screaming, his body is shadowed, so that only the emotion on his face is shown. The man is screaming as if he is in great pain, this indicates that he might be getting attacked.
The main colours of the poster are black and red. These colours are associated with death, night, blood and fear. This meaning that the film might consist of these themes.






The title is written like you would see witchcraft written. This could be a link to the title being ‘The Blair witch project’. The letters are very spaced out from each other, representing isolation, which links to the image of the woods.There is then a short paragraph on what the film is going to be about, the word ‘disappeared’ makes the audience curious and adds to the effect of horror.

The image is of a wood, this gives an insight into where the film will be set, and also it is written in the small paragraph. The image looks like a negative Polaroid, which adds to the found footage. This makes the tree’s stand out and look ghostly and have a spirit feel to them. The colours black and white remind us of death.

The title that we can see on the poster is quite small but effective since it merges with the gruesome image. The title ‘Saw’ is in a white colour to make it stand out since it’s quite small. The font of the title looks as though they are the man’s teeth; this makes the title very effective.

In the poster we as the audience only see the image of a man’s mouth wide open and a bit of the bottom half of his face. Like many horror posters they try not to show a lot on the poster so that the audience are more intrigued (as this poster does).In the image it is very obvious to an audience that the man is in pain, we can tell this because most of his teeth have been pulled out and there is a hook in his mouth.Even though we can’t see most of his face we know that this character on the poster is being tortured. Like most of ‘Saw’s’ posters they always show someone being tortured so if a ‘Saw’ fan you can tell what is going on in the poster without giving away too much of the plot of the film. The tag line ‘ Opening wide this Halloween’ is very humorous and relates well to the image.

The font of the title ‘The Last Exorcism’ is quite gothic this relates to the time that the film is set and creates a spooky atmosphere to the poster. The colour of the font is black which contrasts with the bright off white background. The use of the bright background creates shadows from the image of the girl on the wall, this makes the poster more effectively scary and informs the audience of the genre of the film.

The image of the girl on the wall is very haunting and the position of her body makes her look unnatural or un-human; the positioning of her body is quite spider like. Since the image of the girl is in the corner of the wall it could be said that the photographer decided to position it this way so that it would look as if the girl is ready to pounce out of the picture. This makes the image more thrilling and makes it a must see.

The look of the film poster is important in telling the audience the genre. They use many conventions, which make the horror genre recognisable. All horror posters use capital letters for their titles, adding to the intensity. They use dramatic colours, such as red, white and black. The image’s used are usually quite horrific and show the setting, characters or props.

These elements help to promote the genre of the film, they let audiences know what the film is called, gives hints to what it is about and tells us when it will be out in cinemas.

The film poster markets the film effectively; it lets the audience know the main aspects of the film.