Poster Picks: The Skeleton Key

If you haven’t figured this out about Loba yet, let me inform you all now: I love a bit of PhotoShop trickery. True, I find it a little unnerving what one can do with PhotoShop if one has the necessary skills…but as someone possessing a modest level of Shop-Fu, I also know the immeasurable amounts of fun one can have as well (although I’m sure that those who have found themselves the focus of my PhotoShopping attention might disagree).

It’s no surprise, then, that I was immediately drawn to the teaser poster for the 2005 thriller The Skeleton Key. This is a beautiful example of how, even with mad PhotoShop trickery skillz in full play, giving away as little as possible will always have the biggest impact.

The poster’s composition is dominated by one thing: an unnerving close-up of an eye. Obviously belonging to an older person, as revealed by the deep wrinkles (which look like they’ve been more deeply defined by a little color burning) and the silver hairs within the eyebrow, the eye itself is gone. In its place is the superimposed image of a man in a wheelchair, sitting beneath a canopy of Spanish moss. His back is to the camera as he faces a slightly mist-shrouded house in the far distance.

Even before examining anything else about this composition, I have to say that I was highly impressed, not only by the sheer creepiness of the overall image, but also by the beautiful details that went into this work. The cropping of the image is so precise, showing us no more than what the designer wants us to see and bringing us uncomfortably close to this strange, aged face. The eye replacement is impeccable: The Spanish moss lines up perfectly, looking almost like the reflection of eyelashes; the shadowing is convincing; the photo curves along the natural curve of the eye in just the right ways; and I adore the added detail of still being able to see moisture along the bottom left edge of the eye.

[Loba Tangent: You know what’s really weird? I can’t stand the word “moist,” but I just realized that the word “moisture” doesn’t bother me at all. Crazy, huh?]

Beyond the off-the-scale creep factor of this image, what else can we infer about this movie? Obviously, it takes place in the American South. That house screams antebellum plantation house, and Spanish moss is only a regular resident of those warmer, stickier states as well. Already, I’m gearing up for a bit of Southern Gothic Horror fun.

The presence of someone in a wheelchair at the foreground strikes a balance between curiosity as to what placed him in this position as well as a sense of foreboding. A horror movie is a bad place to find yourself in a wheelchair, natch. Plus, he strikes such a solitary pose there on the grounds of that rather large and foreboding looking house.

Finally, who is it who is watching this man? This mysterious voyeur with no eyes but who sees all? Or at least sees as much as we’re being allowed to see? Because of the cropping and the use of color burning in some places and desaturation in others, there are no concrete clues about the gender or race of this person. Only that they are aged. And currently our only guide into this dark and lonely world.

The remaining elements of this design are equally controlled and sparse. At the top is one name, Kate Hudson, in a white serif font and sporting a classy bit of kerning between the letters (I love when kerning is used for good). Then, below the eye comes the movie title, written in a sans serif this time, with some mottled coloring and wear to give it a little panache. The designer gives us a gorgeous bit of bonus detail here by turning the “E” in “Key” into part of a keyhole, complete with a mysterious glow coming through the bottom. Very clever. Very subtle. Very nice.

The designer of this poster has conveyed just enough about this movie to pique my interest while holding back enough to make me want more. These are definitely mad PhotoShop and creativity skillz at work.