Analysis of a movie poster.

This is the poster for the movie '28 Days Later'.

'28 Days Later' is a Survival Horror.

The film involves a shed-load of zombies and guns.

The conventions of a horror film are to make you scared.

You might also expect to see people die, get injured, or break down.

If we go into specifics, you also tend to expect:

• You may not survive the movie if you have sex. 
• You may not survive the movie if you drink or do drugs. 
• You may not survive the movie if you say "I'll be right back." 
• You may not survive the movie if you ask "Who's there?"
• You may not survive the movie if you go out to investigate a strange noise.

The poster doesn't specifically prove this point.

Although there are some signs which indicate that this poster is designed for a horror movie.

For instance, the colour red.

This can indicate a number of things, such as:

• Blood
• Stop
• Danger
• Evil
• Fire
• Hell

The title for this poster is an important key signifier.

The font that the title is presented in was actually designed for this movie and is now used a lot in titles for indie films.

If you look closely, the font is cracked and broken.
This could represent the cracks that have appeared in society throughout the film.
The characters all 'crack' during the film, they all have key moments during the film where they just change.

The title could represent this.

The designer seems to have gone for a minimalistic approach for this poster.

The poster doesn't display much.

In fact, this is key to the film, although there are hundreds of zombies, there are only a select number of characters within the film that we pay attention to.

We don't see inside many of these characters, and some of them can seem like strangers when you watch this film.

Although it's very obvious, another pointer towards the fact that this is a horror, is that at the top of the poster it says: 'Danny Boyle re-invents the Zombie-Horror, and It's scary as hell'.
Like I said, this is obvious, but really helps people to understand what the film is about.