Movie Poster Analysis: The Amityville Horror

This is the poster for the movie 'The Amityville Horror'. The overall look of the poster has a stereotypical horror movie look, with what seems to be the antagonist of the movie being shown with their back to the audience with what seems to be a weapon in hand. Along with that the character is being shin standing in front of a big house which is most likely the place where the whole narrative is held.

The title of the movie is shown in bold big letters which only takes up a small portion of the poster. However, even with that the positioning of the title still is able to attract a lot of attention due to its colours, which contrasts against the overall poster as it mainly has dark colours all over it. The colours of the title seem to be a mix of orange with blood red, which connote to violence due to their more morbid look. The actual title seems to be in a very rigid and rough font which is normally connoted to freight and fear, two qualities that are very needed in a horror film. The 'Y' in the title seems to also represent a blood trail, showing that the film is more so one to show violence and gore rather than try focusing on jump scares.
Underneath the title the words 'BASED ON A TRUE STORY' are shown. This can most likely get the audience more excited to watch the movie as the whole narrative will be seen as something that has happened in the real world, thus giving the whole film an extra layer of freight and horror.

The poster also has a sort of rip or tire mark effect to show the character and the setting of the movie. This effect can be seen s a way to put more mystery into the movie as the audience will be wondering if that has any actual relevance to what might happen within the film. Also, on the left hand side of the poster, the words 'WATCH EM & KILL EM' can be seen written in faint white paint on top of the dark background, this is most likely the dialogue hook that the producers are trying to reel in more of an audience with. The overall feeling that you get from reading that is fear and freight along with some mystery as it leads you to think of how the antagonist of the whole story will be carried out and portrayed, mainly due to this giving us an early portrayal of them as a blood thirsty psychopath who seeks to kill anyone in sight.

The age rating of the film can be seen within the bottom left hand corner hidden away after all the text that includes the names of the ones involved with the making of the movie. This can be seen as a move to try and possibly help reel in more viewers as the age restriction isn't too visible. This might also help with the advertisement of the film as the more younger people, teenagers, would possibly still spread word of mouth about the film, giving the producers easy and free advertisement for their film. Along with that, there would possibly be boost in DVD sales when the film comes out in that format as the people who are deemed too young to watch the movie could get an adult to buy the film for them.

At the top o the poster it also says that the creators of 'The Amityville Horror' also created a remake of the widely known movie 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre', called 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', which got an overall rating of 6.2/10 on IMDB from 107,000 votes, compared to its predecessor which got a rating of 7.5/10 on IMDB. This can be seen as something to be watched out for by the audience as they'll see how much lower the rating is than the original and might be put off from seeing 'The Amityville Horror' by these figures.