Textual Analysis Of Horror Poster

The image above is a poster advertising the film ‘Scream 4’, an American slasher horror film which is the fourth instalment in the scream film series. This film was directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson and was distributed by Dimension Films.

The denotation of this poster is a picture of a mask if examined carefully the bottom the knife is shaped sharply into a knife. We are unable to tell the gender of the masked person as we can only see a mask.

The connotations linked with this picture run much deeper than the mentioned denotation. A huge amount of low key lighting is used in the poster which helps to cast the darkness in different aspects in the picture. The dark colour connote death which means that this film is not suitable families including children, the red which used which also connotes blood  also with the knife shaped masked which again enforces that this film is not for children.

The Scream Film series has been going on for 15 years + with the films scream series released in the year 1996. The scream 4 did ok with its critics as it scored a 6.4 rating according to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262416/  it can easily be identified by the ghost face which is the fictional identity adopted by the main antagonists in the scream series.

The poster does not reveal too much in depth about the actual film this makes it very hard for people to know who the characters are and which is a technique to attract the audience.

The success of the four scream films is mainly due to the advertising and marketing as they have used clever images and the layout in getting the audience to think what the film is about therefore attracting them to want to watch the film. Am not particular sure what exactly they are doing but am sure it’s good as the film grossed $97,138,686 world wide