Horror Poster Analysis

Poster play is important in the advertising of a film, it raises awareness for the film and can be displayed on many different types of media for example Internet and newspapers.
The Horror poster i will be analysing is taken from the film called "The Last Exorcism". the film is about a troubled evangelical minister agrees to let his last exorcism be filmed by a documentary crew. The Film was released on the 3rd September 2010. The film was directed by Danial Stamm, and includes actors Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell and Iris Bahr.

This poster denotes a long shot of a small female child who is bent over backwards in a white gown covered in blood, this is not a normal position for anybody to be standing in which suggests the abnormality of the girl who acts as the antagonist of the actual movie. The poster uses two main colours, white and red and the use of natural shadowing from the lighting. The red is seen on the gown of the little girl to show blood, the only other use of red on the poster is for the colour of the font for the title of the film. The main colour is the white in the poster which is used ad the background even the gown for the girl is white, the face of the girl is seen to be white as if she is of pail skin this has probably been edited into the photo.

The font of the main title is bolder than any other piece of text on the poster to allow it to stand it to the viewer of the poster to make the title of the film obvious also the font of all the pieces of text on the poster is Sans Serif which connotes a more serious feel to the movie. Moreover there are no actors names or film release dates shown on the poster, allowing us to presume that to find out about the film we have to search for that information ourselves, which is a way of selling the title of the film more.

Having the film poster appear scary to the audience is good as it should make the audience think that the poster itself applied a slight terror that the film also should have a greater effect of doing that, then a hype will build up due to word of mouth from people who expect themselves to go see the film with all their friends and such.

In conclusion I believe that the poster is very effective as a teaser poster to the audience with a simplistic idea, with the image of a girl dressed in white but covered in blood and bent over allowing the audience to come to the conclusion that the girl is possessed with the help of the film title, also a creative but simple tag line that reads "Believe in Him" which tells the audience about the use of religion in the film.