Where movie trailers can capture an audience’s attention with a montage of scenes, a poster must do it with a single image. It needs to grab you immediately. When done well, a movie poster not only piques curiosity but there’s an excellent chance we’ll want it on our walls, too.
Whether the image matches the film or lives up to the potential teased is a different story. These particular movie posters were creative, enticing, and often breathtaking works of art.
Here are the ten best horror movie posters of 2021.
Old (Universal Pictures)
“A new trip from M. Night Shyamalan,” indeed. This single image tells you everything you need to know about the plot, which isn’t an easy task. With the gradual aging on one half of the figure’s body, it takes an otherwise scenic, relaxing beach picture and makes it unsettling.
The Spine of Night (RLJE Films)
It’s fitting that a sprawling, rotoscoped fantasy epic should get a poster that’s a work of art itself. The vibrant colors, ethereal art, and the Lucy Lawless-voiced witch at the center command your attention.
We Need to Do Something (IFC Films)
Sometimes it’s the most straightforward designs that intrigue us the most. One close-up shot of an eye exuding pure, visceral terror is all it takes to sign us up for whatever horrors lie in wait in We Need to Do Something. Washing it in horror’s favorite color, red, is another stroke of minimalistic genius.
Malignant (New Line Cinema)
This excellent piece of pulp art conveys everything you need to know about James Wan’s latest. It tells you to expect a heavily Giallo-inspired horror movie, and that identity could be a central clue to unlocking the movie’s wild murder mystery.
Army of the Dead (Netflix)
If you want a quick, easy way to catch someone’s eye, make your poster pop with bright, vibrant hues and Vegas-style flash. Then make it horror. Netflix’s Army of the Dead introduced a series of vivid posters unafraid to embrace the neon, and it worked like a charm.
Fear Street Trilogy (Netflix)
Apart, each poster in Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy captured the tone and imagery of their respective installments. But lining all three up together and seeing how they bleed into another?
Very, very cool.
Last Night in Soho (Focus)
Edgar Wright’s horror thriller follows a modern fashion design student traveling back in time to London’s Soho district during the Swinging Sixties. This poster captures that perfectly, both in style and in evoking the period era.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (New Line Cinema)
The original theatrical poster for The Devil Made Me Do It marketed the safe bet- Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively). For their fourth appearance in the Conjuring universe, it seemed safe to assume they are why audiences keep coming back for more. We love this cinematic couple, but the theatrical poster doesn’t hold a candle to the IMAX poster, an eye-grabbing work of comic-style horror art.
PG: Psycho Goreman (RLJE Films)
This stunningly gory work of art by Brock Hofer perfectly captures the tone and madness of Steven Kostanski’s horror-comedy riff on sentai. So many intergalactic monsters and fleshy bits across the page, covering every inch.
Prisoners of a Ghostland (RLJE Films)
Sion Sono’s English-language debut is an East-meets-West dystopian journey into madness, but this stunning poster goes all-in on the East aesthetic. Nicolas Cage stands atop a collage of samurai, bones, and characters along the way. It’s weird cinema meets beautiful poetry, and we need this one on our walls.