Horror Movie Poster Analysis - Present Day

A lot has changed over the last 30 years, horror movie wise, as the movies get more scarier and the budgets get higher and also as technology grows everyday, we see that there has been a huge difference on how the film industry presents their movies on posters, from the 1980's to the present day.

Insidious was produced and released in 2010, and was made by the makers of Saw and Paranormal activity, as we can see at the top of the poster.

Insidious is in the horror movie genre and the target audience for this film would be teenagers/ young adults e.g 16-24. The film poster for 'Insidious' follows the codes and conventions of a horror film poster; The audiences eyes moves straight to the main image, which is the boy, it dominates most of the page. He is wearing a red shirt, which could represent blood and death. The shot is a medium close up, clearly showing his face and eyes, which stand out the most. They look like they have been scratched out by the nails of the evil spirit. They are also white, which usually represents innocents but in this case would represent the supernatural. He has a very blank facial expression, he almost looks numb which links in with the fact that in the film, he is in a coma.  The tag line is placed at the bottom of the page, just beneath the film title. It's a light blue colour, representing a the feeling of coldness and emptiness, it also links in with the colours of the background which is also mainly light blue. It's placed in a location where the audience would look next, after they see the title of the film, that way they will know what it is that they should fear which is the boy as the tag line is 'Its not the house that's haunted', it gives clues as to what the narrative is, and tells us it's the boy that is possessed. On the film poster, we see ratings from a source, probably film critics, who has watched the film before hand, this would also attract the audience because the critics have given the film 5 stars which will bring in a bigger target audience as it has good reports.