Poster Analysis: The Strangers

The Strangers is a 2008 American horror mystery-thriller film. The main image is of three masked people, one wielding a knife. This violent image automatically makes us assume these three people are the antagonists of the film, the killers. The use of masks adds to the disturbing feel of the poster, as if these people have cause to hide their identity, they must be intent on causing harm or death, as evidenced by the presence of the knife. The angle used is a straight-on close up of the killers faces, or rather masks, with their black, empty eyes staring straight forwards. Using this style of shot, wherever the viewer looks at the shot, it looks like the killers are staring straight back at them. The image of the killers dominates the poster, implying that in the film, the killers have a large influence in the event and the outcome. Overall, this poster does not give us a large amount of information regarding the film, its location or the events within. It does not even tell us who the protagonists are. However, the fact that the killers, the antagonists, are the main feature on the poster implies that they may be more important than them, implying already that the protagonists may die and the antagonists could continue on their killing spree.

The colours that dominate this poster are grey, black and white. The use of these colours are to make this poster look like an old-fashioned movie poster. This may be to show that this movie will scare people like old horror movies scared people in older times, or it may be used to fool people it is less scary than modern horror movies in an attempt to catch people off guard and scare them more. It may also allude to the idea that the film could be in black-and-white or that the plot could be ‘black-and-white’ in the sense that it is easy to follow.

There are only two fonts in used in this poster. The first is used with the tagline, the title and the line claiming the movie is based on true events. The second font is used for the smaller writing at the bottom which details actors, directors, producers etc.

The tagline of this poster is ‘Lock the door. Pretend you’re safe.’ This tells is that this movie obviously has intentions to scare its viewers, to make them feel vulnerable and in danger even though they’re only watching a movie. This is a form of psychological horror used to make the audience connect with the movie more and make it feel more realistic. It also alludes as to what happens in the movie, that there may be a home invasion, ‘lock the door’, or that people may not realise that there are killers until later on in the movie, ‘pretend you’re safe.’

The target audience for the movie would be a male and female audience aged 18 to late-twenties-early thirties, mainly English and American.