This document analyzes common elements of horror movie posters. It notes that posters either include only one character's face, often in a supernatural way, or feature only the back of an antagonist holding a weapon. Backgrounds tend to be black to make characters stand out, and hiding or limiting views of characters creates an eerie effect. Common colors in horror posters are red and white, which symbolize blood and innocence, and text is designed to stand out against black backgrounds.

1. Horror Poster Analysis

2. WOODS

3. Although many posters for horror films don’t include
characters faces there are some that do. When faces are
included they only ever tend to have one character in the
poster or tend only to have the face of one character. The
characters face tends to be supernatural in some way or is
partly covered with black edges. In these cases the picture
tends to take up all or most of the poster and any background
tends to be black.

4. •The hiding of characters is done to create quite
an eerie effect which highlights the horror genre
of the film. This can be done by having shadow
over the character and when this is done there
tends also to be a juxtaposition between colours
so that the character stands out a lot within the
poster.
•
When an antagonist is shown within a poster, what you
tend to see of the character tends to be very limited. Faces
tend to be very hidden and this tends to be done by
showing the back of a character. When this is done the
character tends to be holding a weapon or there is blood
smears around them or on them. When this happens the
film title is often placed quit central or to one side of the
character, but it never covers up any main parts of an
image such as the blood smears in the ‘Sinister’ poster or
the knife in the ‘I Spit On Your Grave’.

5. Red and white are both common in horror posters, usually coming in the
text or the background colours. The font style used for the title is the same
that is shown in the trailer for the film and within the opening of the film
itself. The title is made to stand out the most in the poster even more so in
many cases than the main picture. This is done through the font colour and
through the boldness and size of the text. A common background colour to
horror poster films is black and therefore white and red stand out whilst
fitting in with the genre, red being symbolic of blood which is often shown
within horrors and white resembling the innocence of the protagonist (s) .