Drag me to hell poster analysis

Drag Me To Hell, 2009, is an American horror, thriller that presents “horror”, using techniques that are primarily conventions that help to connote the fearful emotions and symbolic messages that can be suggested through the characters facial expressions and appearance, masthead, colour scheme, setting, tag line, lighting, props, make up and production values.

In the centre of the frame, the main focal point is shown to be the female character who is obviously the protagonist. Her fearful facial expression gives an unsettling feeling to the poster automatically as we see her being “dragged” into hell by multiple demons, represented by the ugly, burnt looking arms that are reaching out from the flames. The demon is not shown in the poster, which leaves a mystery for the audience when they view the film and can be shocked when the demon appears.

Due to the character being female, I feel that the producer has used her to show weakness and sensitivity to allow the audience to feel engaged with the innocent female and feel more heartrending when they view her being tortured. By the characters costume, hair and make-up, we can see that she is a representation of a female that is typical of the horror genre. She also looks like a real person as if this could happen to you or me. This makes us feel even more fearful, by acknowledging that she’s just an ordinary person, like everybody watching the film and viewing the poster. The female is shown to be sexually appealing and her beauty is demonstrated through her wind-blown hair, jewellery, clothing and make up.

The colour scheme of the poster alters from dark, mysterious, atmospheric dark colours to bright oranges and reds at the bottom. I feel that this shows the contrast between earth and hell and shows the female character being dragged into this new place. Although the colours change, I feel that they are presenting the same, unwelcome feeling due to black being symbolic for power, authority and mysteriousness, relating to the demon, and red being symbolic for anger, evil, death, blood and fire.

The title of the film has been written in capitals, using an effect that appears grainy to represent the damage caused by hell and the battered around letters that presents horror, as oppose to smooth, lower case letters that would be used to show freshness and happiness in other genres including romance or comedy.

The tag line starting with “Christine Brown is a…” is a longer statement in comparison to other poster tag lines. However it states that the character will go to hell in three days which tells us that the story will unfold over three days. The billing block is another convention that is always seen on any poster cover, giving further information about the film to anybody who has seen the poster and would like to be informed with more information about the film. The tag line informs the viewer with a little description of the film as addition to further proving the fact that any, ordinary person can be taken by the devil and makes the film seem more realistic and easily believed.

The setting of the poster is shown in the background to have normal houses. I feel that due to this, the typical deserted house has not been included for the reason of presenting the realisation of “anybody can be taken by the devil”.

Having analysed this poster, I would suggest that the target audience would be predominantly males, aged between 16-25.