Analysis of Horror Film Posters

This is the poster for the classic 1978 film Halloween, which has become not only one of the first but also one of the most well known Slasher movies of all time. It is quite obvious from the poster that it is for a horror film. Firstly the majority of the poster is black, a color that is often associated with evil and darkness which are 2 of the biggest themes in horror films, so it gives the audience the immediate idea that the film has a dark nature. Then when you move onto the picture on the poster it becomes very clear that the film will be a horror, and the image even suggests that the film belongs to the slasher sub-genre. The image shows what appears to be a mask, however the eyes of the mask add to the sense of unease created by the poster as behind the eyes and and the nose appears to only be fire adding to the super natural and dark theme of the poster. The other major part of the picture that suggests to the audience, is that the masked person is holding a knife. This immediately suggests danger to the audience, especially due to the fact that the knife is been held in a threatening way which leads to the audience believing whoever the masked figure is they are going to kill someone.


The poster above, despite been a horror poster, is now unfortunately quite outdated when it comes to the sort of posters that are been produced today. Therefore if we are going to be looking at horror posters to get inspiration as well as to understand the current conventions for creating a horror poster, we need to look at more modern posters like this one:

This is the poster for the 2007 remake of the original Halloween film. As you can see the poster has quite a lot of differences then the poster for the original which was released almost 30 years before this remake. The main color scheme of the poster is different to that of the previous poster, even though it does still use the same 2 major colors, Orange and Black. It is immediately obvious from the poster that the film is a horror film and there are several major reasons for the audience to immediately identify that this is a horror film. Like black, orange which is the major color used on this poster, is often associated with horror films. Orange often represents danger in films due to the fact that the main color of fire is orange and thus the color has got a reputation as been a color associated with darker events. Unlike the previous poster this poster gives a little bit more information about the plot and events of the film. As you can see in the face in the background that is made up different images from the film. The picture of the killer also shows a lot more and that he does actually appear to be human and not a supernatural figure as he appears to be on the previous poster and the image also immediately shows the viewer that it is a horror movie seen as the villain of the piece is carrying a knife and a decapitated head.