Movie Posters

Movie posters are important because it is a form of advertising and without advertising, no one would know about films that are being released. By analysing a movie poster, you can gain a lot of information. The 'Scream' poster above is a close up shot of what we can make out to be the victim as she look scared with her hand over her mouth, looking like she is trying not to scream. The audience will decide from the poster who is the bad guy and who is the victim, by the audience making their own choices this is called syntagmatic. We can tell the difference between an old movie poster compared to a modern movie poster by looking at the length of text above the picture. On the 'Scream' poster is says "Someone has taken their love for scary movies one step too far. Solving this mystery is going to be murder". 'Scream' was released in 1996, comparing their movie poster to a more modern horror film such as 'The Strangers' which was released in 2008, there are only four words above the main picture, "Because you were home." This answers our question of why.
Horror movie posters conventionally show an image of either the murderer or the main victim that is targetted. For horror film posters they don't have to show the whole of a person, they can show just their eyes, this can be used to show fear. They can show just a hand with them holding a knife, this can be used to show mystery but also telling the audience about the weapon of choice. Horror films are created to scary the audience but they are also create to keep the audience guessing or prove the audience wrong.