Film: The Faith of Anna Waters
Year: 2016
Genre: Horror mystery.
This is a 2016 American-Singaporean horror, mystery film
directed by Kelvin Tong. After the mysterious death of his sister, an American journalist
travels to Singapore to investigate her death.
To begin with, the movie title “The Faith of Anna Waters” is
written in a way so that words increase and decrease in size, with the word “faith”
being the largest. This creates a distorted look to the poster and thus is a
stereotypical factor of horror movies. Perhaps, this was used the highlight the
word “faith”, connoting the significance of this word to the audience. This is
another convention of horror movie posters and posters in general, because by highlighting
the word “faith”, a plot hint is dropped, the idea that this movie might be
about religion. Moreover, the movie
title is also colored in red and the word “faith” seems to be engraved with scriptures.
Although, the writing of the scripture is not clear, it could be assumed that
it is a religious scripture because of the word “faith”. Once, again the word “faith”
is highlighted again. The color red is an extremely conventional color of
horror movies, as the color red can connote to danger and blood, which is an
iconic prop in horror movies. Overall, the use of text in this horror movie is very
stereotypical to other horror movie posters.
Secondly, the use of color in this horror movie is also
stereotypical to other horror movie posters with the mystery sub-genre.
Generally, dark colors have been used to create the poster (black, grey and
brown) and these colors are conventional colors, because they create a very sinister
and mysterious connotation to the poster. Moreover, the use of low key-lighting
and vignette editing, has created shadows and thus highlights the dark colors further.
As a result, audiences are attracted to the dark vibe the poster gives. In addition,
this poster conventionally uses a pop of color in the movie title and that of
the color red, this is important, because the dark background allow the movie
title to stand out, as this is one of the more important components of a movie
poster. Overall, the dark colors allow
this horror movie poster to be stereotypical to other horror movie posters.
Thirdly, this poster conventionally features a mid-shot of
one character that is centered in the middle of the rule of thirds. This character
being female is also conventional (as in horror movies female characters are
stereo-typically used as victims) and due to the movie title, we as an audience
can assume that the character’s name is “Anna Waters”, once again conventionally
dropping a plot hit. The female character seems to be clasping her hand tightly,
while showing a very painful expression. Perhaps, she is praying, as in her
hands she is holding desperately on to a religious necklace. This creates a
stereotypical representation
of women, as women are represented as being weak and vulnerable. This also
stereo-typically represents religion as suggesting heal but inflicting pain, because
the hands that she is using to hold onto the religious necklace, has blood streaming
down from it. Moreover, the use of blood is symbolic of pain and is also a
conventional prop used in horror movies, to represent death or pain. Thus,
overall, this horror movie poster has many conventional features and these are
the features that draw audiences in through curiosity to watch the film.
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