Poster Research

In the past few decades, it has become more the norm to market movies by their director rather than genre. For example, Alfred Hitchcock may have his own section in a film store, rather than a section for psychological thrillers with many Hitchcock films in it.

In the 1990’s, it was popular for psychological thrillers to be crossed over with crime thrillers, like The Silence Of The Lambs, for example, and in more recent years, the horror, fear, and brutality aspect of psychological thrillers has been emphasised. As we can see above, dark colours are often used in marketing such as posters, post-2000, possibly because they make the film seem scarier and elicits anxiety and fear in the audience. We can also see that the focus is in the middle of the poster, such as the house in Misery and the post-it note in The Machinist, while the rest of the background is a block colour and/or not much is happening. This could emphasise the idea of being trapped and isolated that often appears in psychological thrillers. The title of the film is also in capital letters in all three examples, which could be coincidence, or it could mean that it is common, possibly due to it highlighting the "extreme" feel of the movie, that it is pushing the audience's mind to the limit, or even simply to emphasise the meaning of the words, or what they could symbolise.