Film poster analysis

THE CONJURING The conjuring is an American supernatural horror film, made in 2013. I feel as though this film poster is pretty typical for a horror film. The colour scheme consists mainly of darker, grey-toned colours, which is often the case for horror film posters because darker colours create a more mysterious, spooky effect. The colour becomes lighter in the middle to allow you to see the image clearly. Along with the colours, textures have also been used on the poster which does add to the rough, unsettling theme. Thinking about all the different elements of both the film and the poster, I’d say that this film’s target audience would be elder teens and young adults. Most horror themed products are aimed at that age range because they seem to be more willing to watch/read something which will scare them. It’s evidently to do with the adrenaline rush and the fact that younger people find it more enjoyable. However, if the audience was too young it wouldn’t be enjoyed because they don’t find being scared an enjoyable experience whatsoever. I personally think that the fonts actually play a big part on making this poster look scary.

Rather than being more Sans Serif and basic looking, like most other film posters, it seems more gothic looking. This compliments the horror theme really well, and it also helps make the poster more recognisable as being a horror film. One of the other bigger features on this poster is the image in the centre. The picture is of a girl sat in a rocking chair, with a slight over-shoulder shot looking at the doll in her lap. The doll is actually looking straight at you which creates a very unsettling, uncomfortable feeling because the audience know dolls are supposed to be inanimate objects and they shouldn’t move on their own. The creepy doll concept in horror movies was so successful because when you take something that’s supposed to be really innocent and harmless and you then make it sinister/evil, it makes us question everything else we consider to be innocent. It’s now to the point where a lot of people have phobias of dolls because they associate dolls as being evil whilst simultaneously looking innocent. I personally think that this poster works well, and it advertises exactly what its supposed to. I do think the coverline stating that the movie was based on true events makes people more intrigued. Events/stories are definitely scarier when you know they were based on something that actually happened in real life because you then start thinking it could happen to

you. It creates a sense of paranoia, which is also why a lot of people refuse to watch horror movies because it affects them more deeply than it does other people.

THE ABCs OF DEATH The ABCs of Death is a 2012 independent anthology horror-comedy film produced by filmmakers from around the world. It contains 26 different shorts, each by different directors.

Each letter of the alphabet represents a different way of dying. For example, E is for exterminate: A spider takes revenge on a man who tries to kill it. Looking at this film poster, it isn’t incredible obvious that the film would be a horror-comedy. The critical reception for this film has been negative, and I think it’s simply because it doesn’t follow the norms of a horror film. Since it’s made up of lots of different shorts, some of them are insanely scary and some are almost silly. I think this poster actually represents this well. The way that the grim reaper figure on the cover is really dark and scary looking compared to the innocent child in its lap does create a strange feeling about it.

Similarly to the Conjuring poster, you’ve got this incredible dark entity paired with some kind of innocent iconography. Obviously we see babies and children as being completely innocent and harmless. The colour scheme of this poster works really well. There’s the dark/black features all around the poster, which remind you that it’s a sinister film. Then behind the fantasy grim reaper figure, there’s an emmergence of aqua green which fades out into the black. This is a good way of adding colour to a poster without making it too over the top.

Colour does attract attention to things, so I do think this was a successful move. The title of the movie is in a red, gothic font. Again, like The Conjuring, I think the gothic style font works well for horror movies because it keeps it simplistic, but not so simplisitic where it can be associated with other films. The red colour works well with the black and white features, and also with the green colour because they’re complimentary colours. Red and green are opposite on the colour wheel, which means that they actually work really well together through contrast. The shot type of the two

characters is a mid shot, which I think is a pretty safe shot for all film posters. It’s close enough to see the detail of the featured image, whilst not being too intimate.

THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961) Whilst looking at recent film posters and the techniques they used is going to be helpful when it comes to creating my own horror film ideas, I also think it’s extremely important to look at where these posters originally stemmed from. This is a poster from the 1961 British film The Curse Of The Werewolf. The film was made by the British film studio Hammer Film Productions, which also created many other extremely popular Gothic horror films around that time. Hammer Film Productions dominated the horror film market during its most successful years, earning a considerable financial success. What’s strange about this movie poster is that the film was made in 1961, but the poster style is extremely 1920s/1930s influenced. At this time, posters were mainly created with handdrawn illustrations which depicted scenes from the movies and usually featured the main characters of the film. The typography was also usually quite bold, especially for horror films. From what it looks, the poster for the Curse of the Werewolf was created using paint or was at least hand coloured/drawn. This was definitely an interesting poster style for that time, considering most other film posters were then starting to focus predominantly on typography as opposed to illustrations/images. The colour scheme for this poster consists mostly of primary colours, which does add to the older feeling of the poster.

The masthead takes up 1/3 of the poster, and is a very neon looking yellow colour. I’m assuming this was done to make the movie title more recognisable. It also contrasts against the dark blue background really well. I’d say that the target audience for this film was supposed to be young adults and adults because horror movies were a more controversial topic then. Parents didn’t want their children watching things that would scare them.