'Nightmare On Elm Street' Film Poster Analysis

The main colours on this film poster are red, black and yellow; colours which represent fire. Fire can cause destruction and through the use of these primary colours, it connotes a sense of damage – something that links to the storyline of lives being ruined by a man in their dreams.

A black blurred border is located around the edges of the poster – this conjures up a sense of being trapped and the sides closing in on the characters, much like when you are falling asleep.

There is a contrast on the poster of light and dark; natural sun rays streaming through from the window trying to light up the dark room. This is binary opposition between evil trying to deteriorate the good. The positioning of the models also complements this argument; as the victim is closer to the audience whilst she is lower than the ‘evil’ approaching her from behind. The man is higher up than the woman, while she is sinking into the floor showing evil as more dominant and superior than good in this film. The text reading ‘he knows where you sleep’ adds to the fact that there is no escaping from this monster, he knows everything and will always be there. The faces have both been darkened so characteristics are not visible, however this connotes mysteriousness and we as the audience are then left to imagine ourselves what their facial expressions show.

All of the textual information on this film poster is positioned at the bottom centre of the page, leaving a lot of room for the central image to grab everyone’s attention the most. As the colour scheme is red, black and white, the text is written over the darkest part of the image in red and white font making it more conspicuous. The title of the film isn’t written clearly, some parts of the letters are fogged over denoting that not everything is simple and perfect and not everything is easily fixed.