Into the House of “Horror”s

Things get very creative in terms of typography as designers are able to work with more creative typefaces compared to action posters. While you’ll still find simple, yet bold and textured sans serif typefaces (see Hacksaw Ridge on the previous page), you’ll also be exposed to typefaces with high contrasts which as the one used in La La Land, with the drastic sizing within the letters themselves.

You’ll also find more decorative types, however. For example, The Breakfast Club relies on a typeface that looks similar to a typewriter, with its wide kerning and letters that alternate between different weights, or thicknesses. Drastically altered typefaces will also usually be featured in drama posters. These tend to stand out and catch the eye of potential movie goers and can create visually interesting layouts as seen in The Godfather.

Finally, you’ll often come across typefaces that look like handwritten script. This is pretty common, as it helps the viewer connect to the poster more, as it looks like someone sat down to write the title of the story. Casablanca is a great example of this with a typeface that looks like hand written script, or cursive (most likely because it was at the time, but even today

(La La Land, 2016)

you can find similar typefaces) with paint strokes still visible.

As a fun little comparison, here’s the original A Star is Born compared to the 2018 remake! I always find it interesting to compare older posters with their originals to see how far design has come and it’s interesting seeing the huge jump from the 1930s to the late 2010s! They feel similar but are clearly different!

(A Star is Born, 1937) (A Star is Born, 2018)

And here is where I fully admit that I am a total wimp. I don’t like horror and I will tend to avoid it when I can. So, naturally, I decided to do a project where it feels only natural to focus on one of the powerhouses of genres. Having existed in cinema for more than a century at this point, horror is a type of film that aims to elicit fear and/or disgust in the audience, usually for entertainment purposes (“Horror Film”). In a time of relative peace, people tend to seek out experiences that get the blood pumping and turn the senses up to the max, and this is exactly what horror aims to do. These films want to explore darker subject matter, potentially dealing with transgressive topics or themes (“Horror Film”). Horror is an art that aims to outrage or violate basic morals and sensibilities (“Horror Film”). While there are many subcategories to horror, you will often see film techniques that try to evoke a psychological response in the viewer (“Horror Film”). I think a good example of this is the found footage style of filming used in movies like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, in which the home camera style really got to people‘s minds as it felt so realistic at the time. Some quick fun facts about the genre include the fact that horror only became a codified genre after the release of Dracula in 1931 (though instances of it were seen before that time) and the fact that it is a very prominent genre in Japan, Italy, Thailand, and several other countries!

Like the other two genres listed above, horror posters try to get themes and plot references across through their basic designs, but here is where the differences really shine. Due to the nature of horror films, the overall design can be more fanciful, mysterious, and frightening than other genres. Designers need to find the right balance to not give too much away from the film while still making the poster just enticing enough to bring viewers in to see the film, a common trial throughout the decades. The 1918 film Alraune has a very interesting poster design that most definitely leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable but wanting to learn more. Here we have only the head of a beautiful young woman and not a hint of a body, as that’s all there is to her because from the neck down she sprouts roots that cling to the heads of several, presumably dead– considering they are colored green– men. The woman wears a haunting smile on her face leaving the viewer to wonder about her narrative and motives. The only hint of a plot we get is either a supernatural woman who hunts these men or possibly a criminal of a woman who targets the opposite gender. Either way, the poster creates a sense of unease and is mysterious in a way that gives very little about the plot to the viewer, playing to a lack of knowledge.

(Alraune, 1918)

Arguably one of the most famous posters to ever be displayed, here is the classic yet effective poster for the 1975 film Jaws. Fear of the ocean runs deep among many of us, with its expansive depths and dangerous creatures, not to mention the fact that we can’t always see what brushes up against our legs as we swim, so it’s no surprise that someone would eventually focus a horror movie around a sea creature known for being one of the seas’ top predators. The poster for Jaws emphasizes this fear of sharks, showing a larger than life Great White with its multiple sharp rows of teeth and pitchblack eyes. Getting attacked in the water poses a great threat many of us are all too aware of as well, so we feel a sense of fear for this unsuspecting woman at the top of the poster. Relying less on mystery and more on fright, this poster piles on several fears we feel as humans: being alone in a body of water with potential predators surrounding us who are out for blood, drowning alone with no one to help, and so on. Here we get a better sense of the plot, as the shark appears to be swimming towards the woman with a gaping mouth and we can assume the shark is not one to be satisfied with a single meal. The real mystery comes from how the shark will be dealt with by the end of the movie.

One recent poster that plays very well on the idea of the mysterious and frightening is the 2020 poster for The Invisible Man. Similar to the poster for Spencer mentioned earlier, here we have extensive use of negative space. The fear of the unknown is a powerful thing, so to have a frightened young woman peering back at a deep emptiness leaves the viewer feeling anxious. What does she hear or see that we don’t? What does she know? The poster, despite the title revealing the fact that she may be looking at an invisible man, leaves just enough questions to really play up the mysterious factor while also toying with common fears people, especially women, may have. While it isn’t just women who face the threat of being jumped or attacked at night, it is a common enough occurrence that most if not all of us are inherently aware of, a fear that is touched upon here as the woman is definitely being followed. Not knowing who’s behind her is one thing, but the fact that posters are encased in glass that often shows our reflection, means that those who view the poster can easily become the person who the woman is looking back on. The person following her could be anyone, even you, and is a great design choice.

(Jaws, 1975) One major design aspect worthy of note that you will see in horror film posters is an emphasis on either the human face or the human form in general. The human brain is an interesting thing; it loves to recognize and identify patterns, and is built to recognize the human face, body, and the

(Nosferatu, 1922)

emotions conveyed through these parts. So, when it sees something off or unnatural about something that should be human, our brains immediately recognize that something is wrong – gotta love the uncanny valley. A real life example of this is the unease many people feel when seeing humanlike androids or robots. Playing on this feeling can be seen as far back as the 1920s in with the movie poster for Nosferatu. Here we see the silhouette of a man, immediately playing up the mysterious factor, but something is clearly wrong. The man is hunched over with a face that doesn’t quite seem right. His proportions are off and, most notably, his fingers appear more as claws than human fingers, begin sharp and mangled. Silhouettes are common in horror movie posters, but seeing one so distorted

and strange once again plays on a fear of the unknown and unrecognizable that must have been very effective at the time.

The early 2000s rendition of American Psycho plays on this feeling of something not quite right almost perfectly. Here we see an objectively handsome man who almost looks to be modeling. But his face legitimately seems too perfect; there is no flaw in sight, not even a hint of sweat or dirty pores and borders on looking fake. This is a little unnerving and the fact that half of his face, especially his eyes which humans naturally connect with, are hidden in shadows only adds to this effect. And then, of course, you have the knife he’s holding. It’s bewildering why he is holding such a dangerous weapon when his face is so calm, and to add to the unease of this entire layout is the way he is slightly distorted in the reflection of the knife. Overall, a poster that perfectly creates unease and tension through fear that is accentuated through the dark colors used.

One of the most unnerving posters as of late, in my opinion, is the 2019 poster for Midsommar. With comfortable looking clothes, a bright blue background, and a flower crown along her brow, you would expect the woman to look happy or at least at peace. Her tears and look of fear, however, break any good feelings the viewer may have felt upon looking at this poster. Seeing such warm colors contrasting with such a horrified expression unsettles us, as nothing about this poster lines up in our heads. We can see that something wrong is clearly going on in both the image and the layout, but the colors want us to relax and feel at peace, feelings quite common in the indoctrination of cults.

In terms of color, we see something very interesting happen over time. Depending on the decade, posters would either rely more on black and white or an otherwise very dark color scheme, or on an oddly bright mixture of colors. The 1910s and ‘20s see the use of darker colors with heavy use of black, greens, and reds. Things brighten up in the 1930s, however, and continue on throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s. The 1950s even share a color scheme similar to that of action posters, most likely because there was an influx of monster movies, such as Godzilla and Tarantula, that featured many brutal and dramatic battle scenes that blur the line between movies that are pure action and pure horror.

(Midsommar, 2019)

You begin to see a shift in the 1960s, however, as colors begin to fade out and color schemes become much more limited, like in the greens and blacks seen in Rosemary’s Baby on page 35. This continues through to the 1990s, where many posters featured black and white color schemes with one or two pop colors, usually red, to keep visual interest but otherwise unnerve the viewer. Today, we see a good mixture of color schemes, some playing with bright colors in frightening scenarios, while others rely on a limited color palette, and others still play with extremely desaturated colors to give off the feeling of hopelessness to whoever is viewing the poster at hand.

(Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1913) (Dracula, 1931)

(Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956) (Rosemary’s Baby, 1968)

In terms of type, things have certainly settled down since the earlier decades of horror movie posters. Early on, there was heavy usage of bold, decorative, and strange typefaces. You have the oddly wiggly type seen in the 1930’s version of Frankenstein and the bold yet scratched-in sans serifs of the 1950’s The Blob. Meanwhile, the 1960’s saw an upward trend of the use of more simple sans serifs, but you got the occasional distracting yet dynamic type face like in Carrie from the 1970s.

In the most recent decades, however, designers have been favoring sharp serif typefaces as seen in 2013’s The Conjuring and in 2021’s Antlers, possibly due to the unsettling nature they can create when edited or warped in some way. The sharp nature of the letters can also come across as threatening as they remind us of weapons or feel like something that can hurt us. Nowadays we are very used to serif fonts and know how they should look due to the fact that many books and essays use them. So, to see something different about a certain serif typeface, we can feel a bit uncomfortable with looking at it for too long. Overall, however, horror is a genre where odd typefaces really come out to play, be it for a campy style

(Carrie, 1976)