Textual Analysis Of A Horror Magazine Cover

Magazine: Empire
Editor: Mark Dinning
Holding Company: Bauer Media
First Issue: July 1989

Empire magazine is a international film magazine. the magazine covers films of all range from comedy to romance.

A magazine cover has many tasks to carry out and does them so in many different ways.

Firstly the magazine cover can be seen as a promotional tool to promote a movie as it makes more people aware of the movie and this creates a demand for people to want to see it.

Secondly the magazine cover is in place to entice people to buy the magazine as a stand alone product  and enjoy it for its content with to refer to when deciding on what movies to watch.

In this issue of empire the cover page is focused on the movie Hellboy 2 . The main image is of the central protagonist from the movie. Instantaneously the audience can verify that the cover is for a horror movie this is because of several things within the images used on the cover.

Most obviously the character on the cover who we can assume to be hellboy is shown to be a large character with horns and a red skin, because of this use of the colour red and the size of the character we start to associate him with things we would associate with a horror such as blood which is also red, and raging dangerous animals such as a bull. this use of images to help aid non verbal communication works very well as a stand alone product but as soon as we combine the title hellboy and the character we immediately think of the devil and of sin, which again are things we would associate with a horror movie

Furthermore the font used on the magazine name is altered to that of which it is normal it is covered in fire and is damaged which again ties in very well with what we would associate with horror movies as during the course of a horror the set tends to degrade more and become darker as the story progresses and more evil/gruesome occurrences happen by doing this the audience are provoked to think about how the chaos may have happened in the movie thus making them want to see it which means the magazine cover is successful in its primary role

Regular Empire Magazine Logo Font

In addition on this magazine cover you can see the strap line ''you and who's golden army'' which is in reference to hellboys coverage although this is important in making up the cover as a whole it is less important then the line stating "Guillermo Del Toro Goes Epic" which is more noticeable as it is in large white font which contrasts well with the red image and therefore stands out more, the reason i believe this is in a larger more clear font is because it allows the audience to know its a Del Toro film so even if they are not a fan of horror they may still want to watch it. 

Furthermore the actual image of hellboy is in such a pose to show him in a way as if he was fearless this fits in perfectly with horror connotations as the evil being within the movie is often shown to be fearless and capable of harm which is also shown in the image through his large muscular body and horns.

overall i believe when all these elements come together they create a very successful cover as in my opinion it makes the audience want to buy the magazine and want to watch the movie.