Horror Poster Analysis

With most of our film based in the woods we could use a similar style of poster to those with woods in.

These posters tend to have a single character. When protagonists are in the poster more of the face tends to be shown whereas if the character in the poster is an antagonist the face tends to be hidden and a longer shot of the character is sued.

The backdrop to most horror posters tends to be either a dark colour or black, or a location (often a woods or house) at night.

The red text could be representational of blood and would therefore suggest that posters with this colour font

are bloody and include murder.

The white text contrasting the black background could be representational of the protagonist character(s) innocence in contrast with the darkness and evil of the antagonists.

The bill block comes at the very bottom of the poster and uses font of a much smaller size than the other text within the poster.

The font colour tends to be a white or red so it stands out from the black background and can be read if it goes over other parts of the characters face/body.

WOODS

Although many posters for horror films don’t include characters faces there are some that do. When faces are included they only ever tend to have one character in the poster or tend only to have the face of one character. The characters face tends to be supernatural in some way or is partly covered with black edges. In these cases the picture

tends to take up all or most of the poster and any background tends to be black.

• When an antagonist is shown within a poster, what you tend to see of the character tends to be very limited. Faces tend to be very hidden and this tends to be done by showing the back of a character. When this is done the character tends to be holding a weapon or there is blood smears around them or on them. When this happens the film title is often placed quit central or to one side of the character, but it never covers up any main parts of an image such as the blood smears in the ‘Sinister’ poster or the knife in the ‘I Spit On Your Grave’.

•The hiding of characters is done to create quite an eerie effect which highlights the horror genre of the film. This can be done by having shadow over the character and when this is done there tends also to be a juxtaposition between colours so that the character stands out a lot within the poster.

Red and white are both common in horror posters, usually coming in the text or the background colours. The font style used for the title is the same that is shown in the trailer for the film and within the opening of the film itself. The title is made to stand out the most in the poster even more so in many cases than the main picture. This is done through the font colour and through the boldness and size of the text. A common background colour to horror poster films is black and therefore white and red stand out whilst fitting in with the genre, red being symbolic of blood which is often shown within horrors and white resembling the innocence of the protagonist (s) .