Movie Poster Analysis: Exploring the 'Crawl' Horror Film Poster

This essay provides a detailed analysis of the movie poster for the horror film 'Crawl.' It examines various aspects of the poster, including its background, purpose, content, and creative elements. The analysis highlights how the poster effectively uses colors, images, and typography to convey the film's theme of a horror movie centered around an alligator attack during a storm. The essay discusses the poster's ability to attract the target audience, create a sense of fear, and provide hints about the movie's story. It also evaluates the poster's realism, layout, and overall impact, concluding that it successfully communicates the film's essence despite some missing details like the makers of the movie, actors and release date. The essay references several academic sources to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive understanding of the movie poster's design and its role in film marketing.

ANALYSIS OF THE MOVIE POSTER
(THE CRAWL)

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This essay is analyzing the poster of the movie 'Crawl'. Analysis of the movie poster
means to analyze the background, purpose, content, and creativity present in the poster. Aim
of posters to provide hints about the story of the movie to excite the audience to watch the
movie to know the entire story. This study is mentioning the indication of each of the
elements of the chosen movie poster to conclude the exact message that is being conveyed
through this poster. Crawl is basically a renowned Horror movie and its poster has been
designed to explain the theme of this movie with clear indication.
Thesis statement: Movie posters are the best way to attract target audiences as it allows
them to use attractive colors, images, font, and characters to explain the theme of movies.
The main purpose of this poster is to conduct advertisements for the film. This poster
also shows the music creator of the film and creates an attraction for the target audience. As
said by Wang (22), movie posters help to make quick visual impressions on the target
audience. The center of attraction of the movie the alligators are portrayed here to make a
clear idea about the movie. The poster looks modern and informative that can help to make a
clear idea about the film.
The color of the background is generally a mixture of black and white, which are used
to depict stormy weather. The signboard is colored yellow with black texts to make it
highlighted in the poster. This horror movie is based on an alligator attack and thus the
danger signboard is attracted to the poster. Other than this, white and red colors are also used
for other texts.
The background of the poster shows a flooded house with stormy weather. This describes
the film because the story is about a girl and her father who are trapped inside a house in
Florida during a massive hurricane. As mentioned by Sukarwo, Muntazori, and Fauzie (14),
posters must demonstrate the main theme of the movie, which can help to create interest
among the target audience. Here, in the poster of the movie, "the crawl", it helps the audience

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know where the film is going to happen. It is in a dark, stormy place in a house. Moreover,
the background also provides a look at the alligator, which plays an essential role in the film.
The poster depicts a key image of a horror film. The stormy weather, tail of alligator,
danger signboard and tagline demonstrates the crawl as a horror film. The poster also
demonstrates violence and death. Moreover, fear is also depicted in this movie poster.
For defining the realism of the poster, it can be said that it does not seem realistic. As
mentioned by O'Halloran, Tan, and KL (150), a poster can be called realistic if it uses images
from real life. However, the poster of Crawl consists of an image of a stormy night that seems
like animation. The content of the signboard is not realistic. It is meant to scare people by
saying "They Will Hunt You". A tail of alligators is present in the poster. However, in real
life, this kind of giant alligators cannot move in residential areas as shown in the poster.
Hence, it can be said that this poster is not realistic.
A bigger Text font has been used to write the name of the movie. However,
information about the music company and music directors have been written in relatively
smaller and usual fonts. In the signboard, a smaller font has been used to portray the entire
message for explaining the theme of the movie. The movie's name has been written with
scratches to make it look scary.
Different text colors have been used in this poster to write different kinds of texts. As
opined by Hu (10) colors must be used wisely in the movie posters as it impacts on the minds
of the target audience. The name of the film has been written in red to catch the eye of the
audience. The creator of this poster has considered the dark background of this poster and has
chosen red and white for writing texts. On the other hand, black is used to write on the yellow
signboard.
In this chosen poster, the tag line is written on the signboard. Clear words have been
used to write this tagline and it has a scary ambiance lying within it. This tagline is

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informing people from alligators by describing the ferociousness of the alligators. On the
other hand, the tagline of this movie clearly indicates that the horror of alligators has been
created within this movie. The image of alligators used with this tagline is making this line
more meaningful and attractive.
The creator of this poster has used lighting very wisely. A night scene is there in the
poster and to portray it, the creator has used a dark shed of light. However, Cascante-Bonilla
et al. (15) have mentioned that a poster must have sufficient brightness so that the audience
can see each of the elements of the poster clearly. Here, a thunderstorm has been used for
adding a reason for the brightness of this poster. The light has been adjusted in a proper way
to highlight each of the elements clearly. Clear visibility of the poster is the key to attract
audiences.
The layout of this poster is very clever and clear. Although the danger signboard
image is the center stage of the poster viewers eyes are also drawn towards the surrounding
features of the poster. For example, when viewers look at the name of the movie, they can
also view the alligator tail, which can give them an idea about the horror factor. In addition,
when viewers look at the name of the movie, automatically their attention is drawn towards
the music creators. As stated by Bo (132), iconography and creating attention are major
characteristics of movie poster layout. This poster is iconographic as it demonstrates the
background of the film without telling. Moreover, in this poster, there are different elements
that draw attention. This includes the signboard that demonstrates the fear factor of the film.
This poster of the movie “the crawl”, demonstrates violence and fear. Hence, the
aimed target audience is anyone above the age of 18. The stormy background, danger
signboard, use of red color to write the movie name creates a horror vibe. Only those viewers
are targeted in this poster who prefers horror movies and can tolerate blood, violence, and
fear.

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This poster is very attractive and can create wishes among viewers to watch the film.
The poster is very much meaningful and describes the context of the film. The lighting, use of
colors and tagline are done in a proper way to create a buzz about the movie. However,
details such as the makers of the movie, actors and release date are missing, which are
essential parts of a movie poster.
It can be concluded that this poster demonstrates the story of the film although it has
very few printed information. It is a great poster as it is successfully describing the theme of
the movie to the target audience.

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Reference list
Bo, Xu. "Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Movie" Argo"." English Language Teaching
11.4 (2018): 132-137.
Cascante-Bonilla, Paola, et al. "Moviescope: Large-scale Analysis of Movies using Multiple
Modalities." arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.03180 (2019): 12-78.
Hu, Huafang. "A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Movie Posters Based on Visual
Grammar." (2019): 1-12
O'Halloran, Kay L., Sabine Tan, and Marissa KL E. "Multimodal analysis for critical
thinking." Learning, Media and Technology 42.2 (2017): 147-170.
Sukarwo, W., A. Muntazori, and M. Fauzie. "Nativization and Formation of Collective
Memory in Urban Design: a Semiotic Analysis of The Sultan Agung 2018 Movie
Poster." 2nd Workshop on Language, Literature and Society for Education. European
Alliance for Innovation (EAI), (2018): 12-19.
Wang, Lei. "The Art of Font Design in Movie Posters." 3rd International Conference on Art
Studies: Science, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2019). Atlantis Press, (2019): 21-
89.