Textual Analysis of a movie poster (kieron)

The Final Destination, written by Eric Bress and Jeffrey Reddick and directed by David R Ellis is the fourth instalment of the final destination series. It was released in the UK on the 28^th of August 2009 (Funded by New Line Cinema)

The Final Destination is about a group of teenagers who are watching a car race, whilst watching, the main character (Nick O Bannon)  has a premonition that the cars will crash and kill people in the stand including himself. He talks his friends in to leaving the stadium, they are then lead by a security guard and followed by some other people. The crash happens as in the premonition but they luckily got away and this time they cheated death, but this is only the beginning as death catches up with them and kills them all in freak accidents.

The format of the poster is portrait and uses a simple palette of three main colours in this poster are black, white and red, with a smoky grey atmosphere. This colour scheme makes for a very dark horror movie and is used a lot in horror movie posters. The black background gives an empty deathly feel, which is a good representation of the film, as the main plot of the whole series is, death chasing the people that got away. There is a grey smoke rising from the bottom of the poster, I think this is a taster of the premonition of the car crash; they have done this before in final destination 3 with the rollercoaster and in final destination 5 turning a bridge into a skull.

The main image is of a girl’s reflection in glass or a mirror, but the glass has shattered only leaving the top left and some broken shards, underneath is a skull but there is very low light so you cant see the back of it, the skull is placed directly behind the girls reflection so the skull's mouth looks like hers. This could be representing her death but because of the low lighting it looks like the skull is coming out the darkness for her, like death is chasing her. The image of the girl has been taken in low light as well, this has created shadow around her eyes, this gives her anonymity, it also emphasises her distressed look, this backs up my point that the skull is death chasing her as she has this terrified look, but the skull looks emotionless, yet it has a slight evilness to it, like it is laughing about the fact that it has caught up with her.  

Under the main image is the title of the film ‘The Final Destination’, in previous movies they have used the same font with a flash of light cutting horizontally through the words. Beneath this is the month it will be release in, this will built hype for the film. This is the fourth movie in the series but they are giving the hype that it will be the last as they haven’t included a number like they did in the previous three films, and the word 'The' implies that this will be the final film, which gives the impression that this movie will be different from the others. Under August there is the website to the film and to the right there is a 'New Line Cinema' logo. At the top of the poster there is a tag line saying ‘REST IN PIECES’, this backs up the main image of the shattering glass and the skull, it also gives the feeling that it will be the last movie in the series. the words 'REST IN PIECES' is a play on the words 'Rest In Peace' which suggest that the characters will not die peacefully but are likely to be chopped up in to pieces or freaking out as they fall to pieces with fear. 

I think that the poster has sold this movie very well as it is using the idea that it might the final film as the selling point. If you have never seen the series of Final Destination films the juxtaposition of the terrified face and the evil skull portrays the content of the film and fulfills its intention of being eye catching and effective in pulling in the public, but also warns viewer that it will be a very thrilling and horrific supernatural film.