The document analyzes several movie posters and magazine covers related to horror genres. It notes conventions used across the posters, such as dark color schemes with red accents to represent blood and danger. Young female characters are often featured to make the content more unsettling. Taglines directly reference death to grab attention. Similar conventions are seen across magazine covers promoting horror content, including bold fonts, dark colors, and creepy images.

1. Daniel Curzon
MAGAZINE AND POSTER
ANALYSIS

2. The poster for Sinister clearly shows conventions from the
Horror genre. The colour scheme is red and white/beige. The
light colours show innocence and purity whereas the dark reds
show danger, blood and death.
• The image behind the girl is intimidating and indicates the
films genre.
• The tagline “Once you see him nothing can save you”
directly addresses the audience and indicates death, this is
typical of many horror movie taglines found on posters.
• The character is a young girl which is often used in a Horror
film due to the fact that adults feel more involved with a
film if there is children involved..
• The font of the title looks as if blood is seeping out of it,
this makes it obvious it is from the horror genre.
SINISTER

3. DEAD SILENCE
This poster for Dead Silence, yet again shows how conventional
posters are.
• Ventriloquist puppets are often seen as a scary image in Horror
and are widely used.
• The colour scheme is again dark with accents of red and
white, red indicating blood and danger, while white seems
demonic and ghostly. This is a typical convention of horror movie
posters.
• The tagline “You scream, You die” directly references death and
addresses this audience. When doing poster research I have
frequently noticed this when spotting horror movie posters.

4. This posters for The Possession is obviously a Horror
poster..
• The main focus on the poster is a character which
is standing alone and in the dark – seems isolated.
• The colour scheme of the poster is dark and black,
which is conventional of a horror.
• The girl is standing in a „forward leaning‟ sort of
position which people who are „possessed‟ are
often seen in.
• “Based on a true story” is usually featured on
horror film posters, it is intended to scare the
audience.
• The character is seemingly a young girl, this is a
recurring theme in horror films as adult audiences
are proven to find films more chilling if they
feature children.
THE POSSESSION

5. The first thing you notice on this cover, is the
bold red background. This connotes danger and
sincerity, but also helps the main character
image stand out. The other thing you notice is
how bold the writing is in the bottom corner
„Scream Returns‟ will easily catch your eye when
sitting in a row of magazines in a supermarket.
It is a simplistic but aesthetically pleasing
design, as it looks like it could appeal to a large
audience.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

6. EMPIRE
This magazine cover also uses the classic black, red and
white. This has a large cover line which says “The 500
Greatest Movies of all Time”. This is one of the largest
things on the cover and will easily catch the eye of a
passer by, especially as it is strategically placed at the top
of the magazine. It doesn‟t cover much on the cover,
which I think it good, because then it means that the
audience has to stop, and flick through the magazine
seeing what it is all about.

7. Scream is one of the most iconic horror
magazines on sale today. Not only does
it feature the classic trio of horror
colours, but it also uses horror fonts
which a lot of magazines don‟t. This
makes the audience want to pick it up
and read more. I think that although
sometimes the cover looks abit messy, it
looks one of the best horror magazines
out there due to it‟s special fonts, creepy
pictures and such.
SCREAM