Steven Seighman
As the calendar turns over to August, it’s time for another movie poster roundup. July’s offerings of interesting design were light. Big-budget tentpoles dominated, and most deliver exactly what you’d expect. Works announcing Avengers: Doomsday and PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie, for example, are competent enough to sell tickets, but forgettable.
A few did rise above the fray, though. They take risks, refuse to play it safe, and genuinely grab your attention. In a month where most fare was cautious, here are five posters that stood out.
It Ends
The premise of It Ends is catchy: friends on a late-night food run are trapped on an infinite back road and forced to pass by the same landscapes over and over again before, I assume, eventually getting free. This poster beautifully conveys that conceit.
Good design creates movement. Here, the rounded corners actively guide your eye downward in a flow that works even from across a crowded theater lobby. The minimalist color palette and bold geometrics make the image impossible to ignore at any distance.
But when you zoom in, the real genius reveals itself. The winding road isn’t just a fun shape to follow; it’s the title. A fantastic example of typography as design. The concept is clean and effective without a lot of marketing noise.
By mentioning Backrooms, this year’s breakout horror success, the poster positions It Ends within the cultural conversation. The writer/director, a blurb, and date round out the restrained text. What emerges feels old-school in the best way. It’s a design that trusts the concept and refuses to oversell in a time when that’s the standard.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Last month’s roundup included a Manhunter re-release poster from Studiocanal. Now they’re bringing Terminator 2: Judgment Day back to theaters, accompanied by this bold new design.
This layout is very commercial: a big star looms in the background while other characters dominate the foreground. It’s the kind of thing I’d bristle at—if the design weren’t so compelling.
The orange-and-black color combination pops. The orange is all-encompassing, and echoes the film’s climax, where the two terminators clash in a factory full of molten steel. Fire does a lot of work here, too. It’s structural, separating the characters, and transforms otherwise negative space into something interesting. At the top, “Schwarzenegger” announces itself powerfully, reminding you who the star—and the box-office draw—is.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a beloved action film. It doesn’t need a poster this cool to get fans into theaters. It does sell the film, but it’s so much more than that. Collectors will definitely want this work of art hanging on their walls.
Hot Spot
Looking at this Hot Spot poster, I’m immediately reminded of Titaine and Aggro Dr1ft, two other low-budget films with memorable advertising. The colors are searing, and the thermal-vision effect is unforgettable. They’re daring in ways that only indie posters can be.
This is a basic composition: title and star with just a bit of helpful text. The color carries all the weight. Warm hues feel dangerous against the black background. Strands of pink, yellow, and orange surge upward, feeling both digital and alive. The tagline, “The system is unstable,” doubles down on the technology, as do the scanlines in the title treatment—perfect for a film set many years in the future.
This poster tells Hot Spot‘s story, but not outright. Instead, it creates intrigue. You don’t need everything explained to feel the pull of the design. The crumbs are enough to make me excited for the film.
64th New York Film Festival
This isn’t a one-sheet selling a specific film. It’s a poster that celebrates the art of moviemaking. The New York Film Festival, now in its 64th year, has established itself as one of the premier festivals in America by championing bold, uncompromising films. Its posters match that ambition. Visionary artists such as David Hockney, Diane Arbus, David Byrne, and Nan Goldin have all contributed. This year, Canadian artist Marcel Dzama has been tapped, and his distinct visual style aligns beautifully with the festival’s commitment to creative excellence.
Dzama recalls early cinema in this piece. He directly channels George Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon and the serpentine dance—a mesmerizing 1890s craze where women in long flowing robes twisted and writhed. Versions of that ended up in several notable films of the time. Here, the woman seems almost superhero-like in her eye mask and elaborate peacock outfit. The wry moon in the background approves, as do the two cameramen filming her. It’s nostalgic, but also very contemporary.
What makes Dzama’s work so effective here is the fantasticalness. It blurs light and dark, merges the conscious and the unconscious. It entertains and surprises—just like cinema itself.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
I know I griped about bland studio posters above. But Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day really goes for it. They ditched the usual floating heads in favor of something that actually looks like a comic book.
The comic-panel structure feels right for Spider-Man in a way that it doesn’t for most Marvel Cinematic Universe characters these days, perhaps because of Peter Parker’s age. Everything tilts on an angle—visual shorthand for chaos. This story has friction. The poster highlights the film’s recognizable faces: Spidey, his friends, The Punisher. Showing Tom Holland under Spider-Man’s mask is a nice move. So is placing his wife Zendaya’s face right next to him.
V-MAX turns out to be woven into the film’s story rather than a viewing experience. Premium formats do spark more inventive design (see the Fast and Furious 4DX poster in last month’s roundup), and this one capitalizes on that. It understands the assignment, even if it’s ultimately just advertising a standard format. For a big-studio comic-book movie poster, this outshines most of its predecessors.
