Conventions of movie posters within the horror genre

• • Dark lighting is generally used in horror film posters along with dark colours such as black and the colour red, which is usually associated with death and blood.
• • Bright lighting or the colour white are generally used to contrast the dark colours, which creates a mysterious almost supernatural atmosphere to the poster.
• • Shadows are used in horror film posters, which creates a sense of mystery when the audience views the poster.
• • In all film posters an image is used to try and instil fear into the audience while at the same time giving a slight hint as to what the films plot is.
• • Horror posters tend to have some sort of tagline or synopsis on them. This is used to first of all give the audience a tiny peak as to what the films plotline is but also it used to create fear in the audience.
• • A symbol of what is scary in the film is used in a lot of film posters for example a Wicker man used on the Blair Witch Project film poster.
• Antagonist vs protagonist
• Stock characters
• Stock Situations

These are all part of a formula that horror film produces use to help the audience recgonise that the film they are going to watch is from a particular genre.