A2 - Analysis - Hatchet Poster

Hatchet is a horror slasher film from America, and describes itself as “Old School American Horror”. The story is fairly predictable; a group of people of various professions go exploring and disturb a malicious spirit, which proceeds to kill them all.

Target Audience

Hatchet’s target audience is probably mainly male. Two of the female characters are assigned the careers of porn stars to further suggest that the audience is primarily male, and provide sex appeal to draw in a larger male audience.

Layout

The layout of the poster is fairly simple. At the top of the page is a quote from a review saying it’s killer, Victor Crowley, is the “next icon of horror.” Along the bottom of the poster is a list of credits for the film, which is something commonly seen on film posters. Also featured is the address of the film’s website, so people who see the poster know where to go to find out more about the film. In the centre of the poster is the image of a hatchet, as per the title.

Imagery

The imagery used in this poster is fairly simple. It is just the picture of a hatchet, dirtied with what is assumed to be blood. The rest of the poster is black, and the photo has been edited to make it appear as though the hatchet is reflecting a light source shining behind it.

Text

The text is all in the same font and is the same colour: white. This clearly links it all together and reinforces the continuity of the poster, making it all look like more of the same poster than using different colours would. The white is also the colour of the light behind the hatchet. The tagline of the film, written below the title, states that it is "Old School American Horror", suggesting to the audience that films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre that are credited as being "old-school horror" may be similar to this one, and potentially drawing in an audience of fans of classic horror films.

Conclusion

This is a good example of a simple poster, with not much complexity or clutter. This suggests that it is a trend of horror film posters-they are rather simple to design, but all the more eye-catching for it. If I follow this apparent trend, I will need to ensure even more that everything on the poster is perfect, because there will be so little there.