This is my favourite poster of 2011…created by Tom Hodge(AKA Dude Designs).
There is so much to love about this poster…i love the Art Nouveau decorative elements that frame the illustration and kind of flow into the image of the ghost bride and he has the two main characters spot on.
The Balance in the imagery is great and the typography is really nice to adding to that turn of the century vibe that gives you a little insight into some of the elements involved in the story, along with the ghostly bride…which doesn’t really give anything away because this is part of the story you find out from the beginning of the film.
The film though, is so much scarier than this poster gets across, there truly are some creepy moments in the film and i guess the fact that the poster doesn’t include all those moments could be seen as a good thing, though i do think the poster comes across as a little…i suppose teenage friendly is the right word…more the Goonies than the Crazies…but that doesn’t take away the fact that this is an awesome poster.
Whats also great is the poster does invoke those posters from the eighties for films such as the Goonies, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and the… etc, so i guess its pretty Drew Struzan in style which is so a good thing cos if i was a kid of today this is exactly the kind of movie i would be smuggling into the house to watch when my parents were in bed instantly putting it into the ‘classic cult’ movie category along with its poster, which also puts it into the Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead and the general batch of awesome horror movies from the eighties that i used to watch unbeknownst to my Mum & Dad.
But the thing about all those old horror movies that got me excited to see them in the first place was seeing the artwork for the posters or video covers first and thinking they just looked so cool and scary…just from the artwork…and thats the power of the art right there…and truth be told, sometimes the artwork was better than the films.
In this case (The Innkeepers) the poster fed my desire to see it and the film didn’t let me down either so you get both…which makes a change.