Steven Seighman
Fall is a great season for film releases. Festivals introduce smaller titles to the world, prestige films seeking Oscar recognition arrive in theaters, and spooky season is underway. All of that comes together in September, when marketing campaigns for these films begin in earnest, making for a fun and eclectic poster roundup.
This month’s selections span a range of genres and artistic styles, including a piece by a famous octogenarian. I hope these selections get you as excited for fall at the movies as they got me.
Heil Jupiter
Sam Smith‘s poster designs are reliably intelligent and visually arresting, and his new work for Carlos Reygadas’s Heil Jupiter proves why. The film itself sounds like a lot to wrap your head around: Two young couples on a remote coast encounter a mysterious, otherworldly presence. Their dreamlike world blends nature, technology, myth, and authoritarian violence. It’s ambitious and strange, and Smith’s poster honors that.
Set against black, an egg-shaped form dominates the composition, its surface alive with a warm magenta that radiates downward as if it’s approaching something. Inside the ovoid is an abstract blue mass that feels almost like the Milky Way, but probably isn’t. The ambiguity makes it incredibly intriguing. At the top, flames suggest cosmic descent—this object is plummeting through the night sky. The title sits jagged and eye-catching above it all in a spectacular typeface that feels both modern and vintage sci-fi.
What makes this work is Smith’s commitment to ambiguity. The refusal to state any specifics mirrors what the film’s protagonists must experience: incomprehension in the face of the inexplicable. There is a hint about the genre, though: the retro-futuristic color triad is incredibly sci-fi, especially in the context of the design. It harkens back to Smith’s previous work on Fassbinder’s World on a Wire for the Criterion Collection.
The hierarchy guides the eye downward deliberately, from title through flames to that magnetic, unknowable center. Gravity at work. Everything about this design is intelligent and puts a lot of faith in its viewers. Smith trusts his audience to think about the concept and ponder the unresolved.
You Can See Everything
If you’ve seen the trailer for You Can See Everything—or the memes it spawned—you know a key part of it is a tight shot of Elizabeth Holmes and co-director Nathan Fielder starting at one another for an uncomfortably long time. That unease is captured beautifully in this poster for the film from Percival & Associates.
The design mirrors that moment from the trailer, but moves in even closer on Holmes, to the point where she goes beyond the camera’s focus. She invades the frame as Oppenheim and Fielder invaded her life during three years of production. The blur isn’t softness; it’s menacing intrusion.
Typography plays a supporting role, anchored to the bottom in a Helvetica variant. It’s ubiquitous, neutral, corporate. But it deliberately breaks the layout. The text reads right-to-left across two lines, tilting the viewer slightly off-balance. Helvetica itself carries weight here. After decades of dismissal, the typeface has resurged as shorthand for tech companies and luxury brands. A24 incorporates it semi-regularly (Backrooms, among others) to signal hipster credibility and institutional elegance. On this poster, that coolness registers as clinical detachment—something both Holmes and Fielder often seem to possess.
This design is slick in its simplicity. It reads as cool and presents its subject matter with a wink—very on-brand for A24, Fielder, and Oppenheim.
V/H/S/MIXTAPE
The poster for Shudder’s V/H/S/MIXTAPE transforms nostalgic memory into nightmare. The Refinery’s design centers a skull whose eye sockets become cassette reels. Below, tangled tape spills from the dislocated jaw like vomit. Blood spatter stretches across the middle, positioned where ears might be; a smart choice for this installment of the franchise built around audio horror.
The design layers found materials to become a mixtape itself. Everything is printed on worn paper, label maker text lists the directors, and a handwritten tagline (“Low fidelity, high body count”) scrawls urgently and unhinged across the lower edge.
The title treatment anchors the composition in stark white sans-serif at the bottom, printed on photocopied tape layers. This is where the design falters slightly: the jagged edges feel computer-generated and exude a ’90s aesthetic, out of step with the handmade authenticity everywhere else. It’s unclear whether this artificiality serves the concept or simply breaks it. A minor quibble, but worth noting.
Still, the poster beautifully delivers what the franchise promises: unique narratives, technological dread, and relentless violence. It’s excessive and unapologetic, just like the V/H/S series itself.
The Heretiks
This poster rewards a second look. Created by Creepy Duck Design, the dual-image concept lands differently depending on your perspective. From bottom up, silhouettes loom menacingly, almost as if they’re standing over your grave. Flip your gaze and a crimson hand descends like it’s about to consume them.
This concept doesn’t break any new ground. The Conjuring: Last Rites did something similar last year, for example. But The Heretiks executes it with a rawer energy. Where Last Rites felt like a polished studio design, this one revels in its rough, low-budget edges.
Everything here announces indie horror immediately. The brushwork is deliberately messy. The type is chaotic and jagged. Even the pedigree—a Fantastic Fest logo, nods to Hellraiser, Terrifier 3, and Backrooms—signals to a specific audience and not necessarily mainstream moviegoers.
The red-and-black color palette has become horror shorthand, and it’s used effectively here. But the sophistication is the white logline that cuts through the darkness. It doesn’t just draw the eye downward; it creates impact and forces viewers to actually read its grim warning: “This Halloween, the world ends at midnight.” It also provides a bit of context to the image above. Together, these elements create a great poster that functions on multiple levels: eye candy, visual puzzle, cultural beacon, and text-driven threat.
Digger
In a stark departure from the colorful, energetic key art for Digger, artist Ed Ruscha’s poster takes a far more ominous approach. It forgoes Tom Cruise’s star power in favor of a type-heavy design that feels more like activism than advertising.
This isn’t a poster you’d find on the side of a bus. Unveiled at LACMA’s annual Art + Film gala, it’s better understood as a fine-art piece than as conventional marketing material. It relies on Ruscha’s fondness for text and draws upon the Hollywood influence he’s exhibited throughout his lengthy career.
At the center of the image is a glacier, its face crumbling into the sea. The glacier is central to the film’s narrative, so Ruscha’s decision to incorporate it is straightforward. But the image also alludes to something larger: the crumbling of Digger, the crumbling of humanity, and perhaps the death of the world itself. The glacier’s blue hue is the only color in the design. Along with the off-white border, it echoes the film’s cold, washed-out color grading.
In true Ruscha fashion, text plays a major role in the composition. The word “Digger” descends vertically through the center of the frame, perhaps suggesting the character’s fall. Paired with the shovel beneath it, the title might also represent the character himself, digging into the bottom of the design just as he does in the film.
The central image is framed by multiple taglines, with the director’s credit set in an outlined Helvetica at the bottom. The use of two frames is especially interesting. Read from the outside in, the text makes it feel as though you’re digging your way toward the central image. Whether intentional or not, it’s a smart and playful touch—qualities the film itself seems to possess.
