The posters I have presented above are all possession horror. As part of our promotional package

my group will be creating a possession horror movie poster. I will also gain knowledge of what to

include in my film poster to make it more effective and successful for the audience. The six film

posters have been designed to successfully promote each one of the films within the possession sub-

genre. Through carrying out an investigation of them and comparing each of them together, it is

possible to identify shared features within them and to establish repeated patterns. We see general

conventions in all, such as a title, always the largest and most significant text in the frame, an image

that dominates the frame and that signals something important about the film’s narrative, a slogan

to anchor the image and horrific imagery. In addition to this, we see other repeated patterns

throughout also. Almost all of the posters feature a child character as the main image, who is

generally suffering some kind of possession.

In ‘The Possession’ poster, for example, the mise-en-scene presents an image of a girl who has her

mouth opened as a demonic hand is coming out of her mouth. The poster for ‘Sinister’ we see a face

smeared across the wall in blood as the little girl drags her hand on the wall. This suggests that the

narratives of these films, like several other possession horrors, focus around a child protagonist who

Poster Overview

then becomes possessed and whose role is to present the threat to the family. In many cases, the

evil spirit attacks a family as a whole, this scares the audience more as the audience have their own

family, and they then worry that these things could happen to them and their families also.

In five of the six posters we see a possessed child, this reinforces the idea that such characters are

common in possession horrors and that children often appear as conduits of evil. This could be

because children are supposed to be innocent and pure, as children to not tend to be terrifying. In

each of the four posters, the four children have their back facing us or you can’t see the face. This

suggests that the innocence inside of them has been taken away from them and evil lurks within.

The images presented in the six posters are horrific and designed to both to tell the audience what

horror genre the film belongs to and to scare the audience.

In the poster for ‘The Possession’ we see a disturbing image of a decomposed hand coming out of

the girl’s mouth and are clawing at her face. This will terrify the audience as it is not normal to see a

hand emerging from someone’s mouth. From what the girl is wearing, the dirty green gown suggests

to the audience that the film could place in a hospital because you see patients in those green

gowns. In the six posters we don’t see any masked protagonists wielding knives and no bloodied

victims. Instead we see decaying hands, ghostly figures, tormented souls and bending of the body

and this suggestion is that the threat in these films is the evil spirit that is never seen.

In two of the posters all the girls are wearing gowns which could suggest the main characters

innocence’s. There is a consistent pattern with regards to colour too. They use cold colours, lots of

red, black and white, there are also some greys. They are common to help and create a sinister and

terrifying look, makes the audience feel unwelcomed. On the following posters ‘the last Exorcism’,

‘The Possession’ and ‘Insidious: Chapter 2’ the protagonist seems to be disappearing or blending into

the cool colours of the background. This shows that the protagonist is being consumed by the evil

around them and they are being taken into a world of darkness and it’s hard to escape from there.

In each poster, the title is the largest text on the page and is placed in a conspicuous position. In five

of the six posters the title is placed at the bottom of the poster, beneath the image this is usual

because the image is meant to grab the audience attention and then draw their attention to the

title. For every title on the posters they are presented in uppercase font that is bold, simple or

merging with the background.

They also use text effects such as on The Possession title, the title looks like it’s been scratched and

distorted as if someone has tried to hide what the text reads, as if trying to hide a terrible secret, In

the same way ‘The Orphan’ poster does this also. Four of the six posters introduce the production

information that is placed at the bottom of the poster and all six posters have a tagline to anchor or

reinforce the meaning of the image or to reveal more about the narrative to the audience. The

tagline on the sinister poster says ‘Once you see him nothing can save you’ which matches the fact

of the antagonist smeared across the wall in blood. Other text, such as ‘Based on a True Story’ or

‘from the makers of Paranormal Activity and Saw’, is used to draw the audience in. The idea that a

film is based on true story by a real possession makes the film so much scarier and more real to the

audience. It makes the audience feel that the same thing could happen to them. All the posters

presented are effective, they have a lot in common and have minimal text and an image that

dominates the whole poster. The image lures the audience in and the title and slogan is stuck in their

minds.