Movie Poster Analysis: The Thing

This is the movie poster for the horror film 'The Thing'. The poster stands out a lot from and from first look you instantly know that it is a horror film. It grabs the attention of the audience due to the solid black background. The background makes the title stand out as it creates a very strong contrast to the title and other key elements of the poster. The poster is very stereotypical to horror films due to the certain conventions it follows.

The title is in a very big, bold font that covers half of the poster. It contrasts to the plain background and thus makes it stands out. The title has a picture edited in a certain way so that the character is in the title. The character is in a snow storm which makes it fade nicely into the white title. The character has claws which suggests to the audience that the character in the title is the 'thing' and that we should be afraid of it. The character has their hood up and back to the camera which creates more mystery about the 'thing' and intrigues the audience to watch it so they can find out what the 'thing' is.

Under the title there are the words "IT'S NOT HUMAN. YET." The capitalisation, even though the font is a small size makes it stand out to the audience and grab their attention. The words are a dialogue hook which creates a loose end that will be tied up by the end of the narrative. Just by reading the words from the poster, the audience will want to know how it becomes human, and what it was before.

At the bottom of the poster we see the age rating of the film, a website name and the month that it comes out into cinemas. The age rating is very small and tucked away into the corner. This is so it doesn't get noticed as much as the age rating could turn away viewers. On top of that, people younger than this age bracket might still advertise the film through word of mouth to their friends which could boost sales of the film. Furthermore, when the film comes out on DVD these younger people may want to watch it and so could get their parents to buy it for them. If the age rating was much bigger then the younger audiences may just stop reading the poster and as a result . The word 'October' is in bright red in bold font. Red is a common colour for movie posters of this genre as it is the colour of blood which is a common theme of horror film plots. The website address is just another way in which audience members can research more about the film and get more information.

At the top of the poster it says that 'The Thing' was also made by the same producers of those that made 'Dawn Of The Dead' which is a highly popular film, getting a 7.4/10 on IMDB from 190,000 votes. This suggests that the film is brilliant as the production company are seen as very good due to the great success of their past film. This advertises the film massively and will instantly make  many people want to watch the film as soon as they can.