A2 Media Studies Textual Analysis of Movie Poster
Hostel is a 2005 horror film written, produced and directed by Eli Roth. Due to the graphic nature of this film, its showing has been restricted in certain countries. Film posters are advertisements prominently on billboards, films theatres, in magazines, the Internet, and most commonly the side of buses. The motive of a poster essentially is to sell the film to make an audience want to go see it. In addition to this certain devises are used in order of persuasion. There is a variation of both high and low key lighting in this poster as the poster fades and blends from one side to the other. This goes against most conventional horror movie posters as they often only focus on dark mysterious low key lighting which predominately connotes a horror themed synopsis. One of the focal colours in this poster is black, which includes the characteristics of death, sense of space creating mystery, fear and emptiness, all in which links to the genre and plot of the film. In contrast, grey and blue is also used to highlight the character in the poster. Grey can symbolize a variety of topics such as decay, mourning, or the connection between good and evil which may have deliberately been used in association of the plot of innocent people making being caught up in awful situations and in return are punished. In comparison to the colours used in this poster and the newer sequel The Hostel Part 2 poster, the colours used in this poster contrast between the black and grey previously used, which I believe connotes a different tone of violence and death. This may be due to this film being the original to a sequel film. The colours scheme shows the main props used in this poster. The severed head is in the mans left hand and is clearly highlighted by the use of high key lighting in the shot. This shows and connotes to us this man is a killer and plays upon the stereotype of victimizing young women as they are seen as easy pray. It follows the stereotype that plays upon this statement in most horror movies. Also on the low light side of the of the poster you can see the killers weapon of choice. The choice of weapon shows the persona the poster might be trying to represent. The use of a knife shows that the killer like close combat and may describe that their will be a lot of blood as possible graphic and violent murders are in the movie. Fans of Hostel and Eli Roth will know that his movies involve a lot of blood, guts and gore so the image of a knife backs up that point and gives the audience some insight into what the movie initials. The killer top half is cut off. This is to create confusion and mystery to the audience and will leave a few things to their Imagination. The killer’s attire is also very important in recognizing his character and giving the audience some clue into what’s going on in the movie. The killer has distinctively hairy arm which plays on the stereotype that the killer is a real ‘man’s man’ who is very masculine. The worker jeans he’s wearing also implies he’s use to hard manual labour and could imply that his methods of killing are some what brutal and gruesome. As for the text in the poster the writing at the bottom is written in red which represents things like blood, murder, and gore. This gives the audiences and indication into what the film initials. The main masthead is shown in gloomy eerie kind of font that has a spooky theme about it that further indicates that this is a horror movie poster. Overall I believe this poster accomplishes the main purpose of persuading and audience to want to watch the film. This id done through various techniques such as the anonymous actor featured in the poster, the extent of torture shown through the women’s severed head, and the use and fade of low to high key lighting to create imagery.
By Miles Grant
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