One of a pair of character posters for Kane Parson's upcoming, creepy-pasta meets liminal terror horror film, Backrooms, that places Academy Award-nominated actors into some unorthodox and tight framing.
The original poster for the big-screen blow up of the YouTube series of mystery-box meets by way of found footage viral videos with a dedicated cult following, perhaps leaned too far and too clean into negative space, to the point of being novel, but rather boring. This one, which has more texture, more grain, and a distressed Renate Reinsve, with unkempt hair, fingernails of unequal length, pushed into the sickly yellow wallpaper that is the hallmark of the series, is a far better use of said negative space, and you feel the negative here more fulsome, more deeply, in its vertical claustrophobia.
In taking the aesthetic from the DIY Blender, and After Effects VHS filters, to the cinematic, this poster does a better job with depth of field, and translating the look to a more analog The Texas Chainsaw Massacre feel.
The one thing in the image that, for me elevates the whole design, is the rather nondescript (almost certainly gold plated) wristwatch she is wearing in the shot. If offers a complimentary hue of warm, but ill, colouring and texture. It is not in there by accident, and further underscores the the part of American culture that is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, endlessly.
It's a vibe.
Friday One Sheet: BACKROOMS
