The colour

The colour that features in a poster is seen to be a white wash. The whites and greys create a cold look within the film. The darkened edges are a convention of horror posters, to remind the audience what the most basic fear factors; the darkness can bring the most evil out.  The blackness that has blocked out the character’s face creates a sense of deep darkness within either the antagonist‘s mind or the victims. 

The slogan

‘Fear moves in’.

This reveals an insight of the narrative as we are told that either the victim or the antagonist moves in, to presumably a new house or a new family member.

It is placed in an unconventional way underneath the title. It is usually placed at the top of the poster. It is small and written in a childlike font, creating the illusion that a possible demonic child is an antagonist in the film. It is written in white, which can be seen as a pure colour, angels, children etc…

The size is quite small in comparison to other movie poster slogans. It is meant to be one of the main reasons why it attracts the audience’s attention; this leaves an eerie image in their minds.

The main image

This eerie image creates the illusion of the unknown; it can be seen as ambiguous as we do not know whether the figure is the antagonist or the protagonist. This would entice the audience as the ambiguity would create an interest and lure the target audience.

However, upon closer inspection we can assume that the figure is the antagonist as it is leaning into the glass covering its face. This is a horror poster convention as the identity of the antagonist is never revealed until the end of the film. The antagonist is meant to create the feeling of uncertainty, as within the horror genre a monster could be any one from your sister to the next door neighbour. By doing this it makes the audience feel uneasy and scared about the unknown which is of course the audience underlying fear of everything.

The forest in the background shows the isolation of which the victims feels. Furthermore having an isolated and secluded location is a convention in the horror subgenre as it creates the feeling of loneliness and that if anything happened to you no one would know.

The woods can also create a sense of paranoia as the rustling of branches and the cracking of twigs beneath your feet in a silent surrounding can set your teeth on edge.

The grey background makes you feel cold and uneasy as though the chill on the back of your neck will never go away when watching this film, which of course is the whole point of a horror film and thus creates the perfect atmosphere for the film to lure it target audience in.

Other texts:

The information that reads ‘From the producers of The Ring and Disturbia’, this may attract the audience as they may have enjoyed watching these film since they are in the same genre of film. Also these films were very successful and this may indicate that this film will also be successful as it may have a good screenplay etc. however, if the audience didn’t like the listed films it could also deter them from coming to watch The Uninvited.