Friday One Sheet: DEATH TRIP

One of my favourite movie posters of the last 20 years is Akiko Stehrenberger's design for Michael Haneke's FUNNY GAMES U.S. (yes, the remake). I have spoken at length about the many imitators and homages to this power of this design, a close up or portrait of extreme pain or grief.

Here we have the latest, very much in the vein of the Stehrenberger design, in Polaroid format with its beige matting and credit block at the bottom. This is outside and not in the way of the high-grain image (often a key to this style) of torment, with hints of blood in the hair and on the lips.

What also amuses me about the design is the "Stay Home" tagline. It is something that has been beaten into the Western psyche continuously for the last 12 months. While this is a cottage-in-the-woods type horror picture, not a pandemic one (thank goodness), the tagline nevertheless has an extra oomph of familiarity and power, even though the designer here hides it in the credit block, instead of the usual placement at the top of the poster or under the title. The only 'visual cue' here is that the colour of the text (lower-case) is the same as the title itself -- a no-nonsense font, in horror-movie red. 

And yet the filmmaker nod, "a film by" is hand written. Quirky? Or Intentional? Your guess is as good as mine. On the whole, though, I do feel this is a solid homage to one of the great modern poster designs.