Poster analysis

This is the film poster for the film ‘insidious’, the poster itself, looks scary- and gives the viewers the denotations that the poster Is about a film from the horror genre.  The poster has a black ‘fog/mist’ around it and almost reveals the vacant looking boy, with his eyes scratched out. Behind his is a big, intimidating house followed by the sky.

The image if the boy uses a certain light to almost make it look 3D, and he almost shadows off towards the bottom of his image, also, where his eyes are scratched out, it looks as if it’s the poster that’s scratched- not the actual boy: the boys head is central to the poster therefore on first glance that is all you see, his face- which looks possessed. The house behind the boy image looks big, if this house was on its own with no other images round it- people would still associate it with being scary, as it is a perfect stereotype of horror films.

At the top of these images is text in white, this stands out against the black fog I mentioned. The text reads ‘From the makers of Saw and Paranormal Activity’. This could almost be seen as a ploy to get people to go and see it, as the films Saw and Paranormal activity are very successful and are all trilogies; therefore by ‘name dropping’ they may have persuaded followers of these films to go and see this one, as it may be similar- or, just as good.

Below the boy, is also text, this is the most central text on the poster: and is also the largest text on the poster- this shows us this must ne the name of the film the poster is advertising. Underneath that in a teal colour, is writing that says ‘It’s not the house that’s haunted’. This gives us the connotations of the denotations that it must obviously be the little boy who is haunted. If the viewer goes to see the film, then it will become clear that this is possible one of the most memorable lines within the film- which is why they chose to feature it on the poster.

To the right of the image is more text coloured in white giving a quote and 5 star rating from a movie review magazine, company’s often put these on posters as they are praising the film, and often when someone says a films as good, it becomes more attractive to the person who hasn’t seen it, therefore- will go and see it, or buy it on DVD.