11Sep09
Visually striking and deeply unpleasant, and thus perfectly in sync with the film it is promoting, the Australian poster for Lars von Trier's Antichrist was designed by Jeremy Saunders and is already popping up all over the internet, though there seem to be some doubt as to whether this will yet accompany the official Australian release. (Saunders' website contains many fine rejected designs for films he's worked on. I particularly like the first of his 4 Months, 3 Weeks... posters). Though the concept is a little bit Saw-like, it is undeniably smarter than those, and I love its understated typography.
A tough sell if ever there was one, though coasting in on the notoriety that precedes it from Cannes, Antichrist has already inspired many different campaigns. Below are the US one-sheet (top left), based on the original Danish design: the UK subway station design (top right) and Italian poster (bottom left), both of which use nothing but typography; and the more pastoral French poster. But nothing quite compares to the design for Eden, the videogame version of the film (no, really) being developed by von Trier's Zentropa Films and billed as “a nightmare version of Myst”. Love the very Tarkovskian burning house in the background.
Related Films
Categories: Movie Poster of the Week, von Trier
Comments
Street Dude
on Fri 11 Sep at 04:19 PM
All the posters are great except the last two. The last two seem a little nu metal
Just Another Film Buff
on Fri 11 Sep at 04:57 PM
The first poster is a find…. Fantastic…
filmmakermom
on Fri 11 Sep at 05:34 PM
First poster: daring, haunting, provocative. Amazing synthesis!
a7m4
on Sun 13 Sep at 09:19 AM
I’ve never seen that French poster before. This is the one that was used to promote the film here in France, or at least in Paris.
Tim Smith
on Sat 16 Jan at 06:24 AM
Since you are a fan of the type on the Palindromes, poster, Adrian, I suggest you also look at this fantastic Antichrist poster designed for just one film festival: http://thehorrorgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Antichrist-poster-3.jpg
bojkowski
on Mon 25 Jan at 10:23 PM
I really liked the original poster with the hand scrawled typography. It’s a rare example of the art direction of a film and it’s marketing actually in sync for once. The Australian poster (which I’ve seen up on hoardings) ignores the strong look of the various graphics used within the film in favour of hackneyed ‘torture porn’-esque cliqués (particularly in it’s use of colour and texture).
Daniel Kasman
on Mon 25 Jan at 10:37 PM
I too liked how the original poster was unusually in-sync with the film’s aesthetic, but I would say the Australian one most likely parodies the “‘torture porn’-esque cliqués” you note, recontextualizing them in light of von Trier’s domestic/melodramatic/psychoanalytic/Scandanavian-pastiche version.