‘Horror Poster Analyses

I have chosen three horror posters to use for my analysis to enable me to grasp a better

understanding of frequent conventions that are necessary when creating a horror poster. I wanted

to learn this so I could use my learnt skills and inject them into my promotional package and

create an effective and professional horror poster that can draw in my target audience.

Sinister Poster

A young girl has been used for the poster which allow the audience to have sympathy for her because she is seen as vulnerable. Also she is wearing white pajamas which connotes innocence and purity which is ironic as she is smearing what appears to be red blood across the wall. This shows a battle between two colors; white that connotes purity and innocence and red that represents evil or danger. The girl also looks lie she is being possessed or her something has taken over her body and we assume the ‘he’ the evil man is the one that is controlling her.

The first thing our eyes are drawn to when we see the poster. The blood that has been smeared has created a devilish face which informs the audience that there is significance with this character and it also implies that this is what/who the film is about.

The walls are grey and dirty which connote dullness and dinginess and it also connotes decay and a disruption within the film giving the audience an insight of what’s to come. It gives the feeling of death and unhappiness. There are also cracks within the walls is suggesting that something dangerous may have caused this which is also suggesting violence that may have come from the face created in the blood.

Dark shadows have been used around the lining of the poster, especially towards the young girl. This suggests that something eerie and unsafe is lurking around her and this reinforces the supernatural horror sub-genre.

The poster notifies that this film has been created from the producers of ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘Insidious’ which can cause the target audience and fans of the other films to become more attracted to the poster and eager to want to see ‘Sinister’ and identify whether it compares to ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘Insidious’.

The tagline is placed underneath the title and it reads ‘ Once you see him, nothing can save you’. This tagline is suggesting that just by looking at the ‘him’ can cause danger upon yourself. The audience will automatically think that ‘him’ is the face created in the blood and because they have seen this can arouse their inner fear as they may feel the tagline is aimed towards them.

The title name ‘Sinister’ is positioned central of the poster and quite large which makes it noticeable for the audience. The name Sinister seems appropriate for this horror film as sinister means having the impression something evil is going to happen. The effects of blackness dripping off the letters is also useful in reinforcing the genre of this poster.

The institutional information is relatively important, however it’s fairly small compared to the other texts on the poster as they are what needs to stand out the most to grab the audience's attention.