Horror film poster analysis

Typography

The main focal point of the front cover is the bold masthead. The typography of the masthead (insidious chapter 2) is in white and black. This makes the mast head stand out to the audience as it is really obvious and noticeable especially against the black background for the audience. The colour red connotes blood and danger and the colour white refers with ghosts which signifies with what happens during the movie and the director has done this on purpose because of this exact reason. The colour scheme of the background is black which again connotes danger, darkens and evilness; and again this meets with the genre of the film. The number 2 is the biggest part of the masthead because this is showing this is the chapter 2 of insidious and it is even bigger and better than the first insidious.

Tagline

The tagline “It will take what you love most” delivers a slight chill to the audience as they instantly think something bad is going to happen to that family which is in the photo. The word “it” connotes that the thing that is going to take who they love most in some sort of creature. However other than that the tagline is not giving everything away which makes the audience want to watch the movie to see what happens. The image relates well with the tagline as the mum is holding a hammer which connotes that something is trying to harm them in a bad way and also with them all hugging and close together shows that they are scared of what’s going to happen to them. All of the tagline is one syllable long which adds to the tension because it is fast paced.

Iconography- what we expect

I would expect to see evil take some sort of form by a creature due to where the tagline says “It”. Also I can predict that the creature is very powerful due to the family looking timid and scared with just a hammer for protection. Giving this is a horror film I infer than someone will be harmed by the creature, maybe killing or seriously injured. Also the title of the film helps us as the definition of insidious is “proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with very harmful effects”. This shows that the creature objective is to harm the family but in a very subtle way so no one identifies that there is something wrong.

Typography

The title Friday the 13^th is again in red like insidious which again connotes danger, blood and horror. Also the title “Friday the 13^th” creates a mystery for the reader as they are wondering what will happen on Friday the 13^th. But from the main image and the text of the writing, the audience clearly identifies that something bad is going to happen on that specific date. The dark woods in the background adds suspense and tension and this could infer that the danger happens in the woods as many murders and incidents occur because the woods are a very spooky setting to hold incidents.

Tagline

The tagline which is above the masthead says “from the producers of the Texas chainsaw massacre”. This has been deliberately put on the top of the masthead as the producers want to the audience to see that it is from the same producers as the successful chainsaw massacre and this will make it more appealing for the audience to go and watch the film.

Iconography

The knife/ sword which the man is holding are being used to portray the villain as a serial killer and the knife itself tells the audience that there will be murder in the film. The weapon also is an identification of the sub-genre “slasher”. Also as I have said the woods in the background adds tension and perhaps the main part of the film is in the woods.

Colours

As you can see the masthead is in red and as I have already said stereotypically, the colour red associates with danger. The background is a mixture of light and dark and the idea of Levi-Strauss binary opposite theory of good vs evil and light vs dark is occurring in the front page. The reason why it is light in the centre is because the focal point of the front page is the villain and they are trying to surround the light around the villain. This could come as a juxtaposition because when something is surrounded by light it is usually because of something good or for example a good character but as you can see the villain is the complete opposite to good.