The 20 best film posters of 2018

Art­work, alter­na­tive art­work, quads, one-sheets – movie posters are every­where you look. And they’re big busi­ness too, designed to entice audi­ences into the cin­e­ma or renew that stream­ing ser­vice sub­scrip­tion. This year has been no excep­tion, and we’ve scoured the inter­net to bring you 20 of our favourites. Think we’ve missed one? Let us known by tweet­ing us @LWLies.

Alter­na­tive artwork

The film itself might have been a dis­ap­point­ment, but this Jaws-inspired illus­trat­ed poster for Jason Statham’s sum­mer shark romp is pret­ty great – and hints at one of the film’s few high­lights in a scene where a small dog faces off against the tit­u­lar beast from the deep.

Glob­al release poster, designed by Caelin White

We liked Crys­tal Moselle’s dreamy skate dra­ma a lot, and this one-sheet show­cas­ing the cast against the New York city sky­line using a, uh, banana as their ramp cap­tures some of the youth­ful, chaot­ic ener­gy which is so present in the film.

Ital­ian release poster, designed by  Mara Cerri

It’s always nice to get an illus­trat­ed poster, and this colour­ful design for Alice Rohrwacher’s third film is no excep­tion. Laz­zaro him­self is so pure he’s often mis­tak­en for sim­ple-mind­ed, and this poster is decep­tive­ly sim­ple – look clos­er, and the details are quite intri­cate (just look at the atten­tion to detail giv­en to Lazzaro’s hair!)

Glob­al release poster, designed by Per­ci­val + Associates

Game Night was an unex­pect­ed delight back at the begin­ning of the year, and this poster evokes a Hitch­cock­ian tone while also teas­ing the film’s nifty open­ing titles.

Glob­al release poster designed by LA

It looks a lit­tle like a play­ing card, but the dual­i­ty of this clever Unsane poster sug­gests that Sawyer Valen­tine (Claire Foy)’s sto­ry has more than one side to it, but also reflects the way her mind begins to frac­ture through­out the film. The blurred details and red accents (nice dot­work!) are neat too.

US release poster

While the sim­plic­i­ty of this poster for Robert Redford’s swan­song is strik­ing on its own, it becomes even more bril­liant when you dis­cov­er it’s actu­al­ly a ref­er­ence to the US one-sheet for his 1972 film Jere­mi­ah John­son.

Teas­er poster, designed by Grav­il­lis Inc

The dev­il real­ly is in the details in Ari Aster’s sear­ing hor­ror debut, and there’s some­thing unnerv­ing about this art­work, which plays on Annie (Toni Collette)’s pro­fes­sion as an artist who cre­ates minia­ture mas­ter­pieces. See also: the poster with the creepi­est fam­i­ly por­trait of 2018.

US release poster, designed by BLT Com­mu­ni­ca­tions

You can usu­al­ly rely on the Coen Broth­ers for a crack­ing poster design. This one’s actu­al­ly the sec­ond and per­haps less­er-known com­mis­sion for The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs. We like the ini­tial design too, but the leather grain which makes this ver­sion resem­ble a book reflects the film’s struc­ture, and the stitch­ing detail on the frame is to die for.

Sun­dance poster, designed by Dana Davis

This col­lage design reflects the grass­roots art move­ment at the heart of Josephine Decker’s lat­est, with new­com­er Hele­na Howard posi­tioned front and cen­tre between Miran­da July and Mol­ly Park­er. The snake detail is a nice touch too, but makes a lot more sense when you’ve seen the film.

Alter­na­tive art­work, designed by Per­ci­val + Associates

It makes a lot of sense that Amer­i­can Ani­mals had some great art­work, giv­en that one of the char­ac­ters is an artist, and the plot revolves around steal­ing a great work of art. This one, which sees a sil­hou­et­ted flamin­go bear­ing down on the wouldbe art thieves, is strik­ing in its simplicity.

Anniver­sary poster, designed by Huang Hai

There have been some crack­ing rere­lease posters this year – we also like the retro-style one for John Carpenter’s The Fog. To cel­e­brate the 30^th anniver­sary of My Neigh­bour Totoro, Stu­dio Ghi­b­li com­mis­sioned a new poster, designed by leg­endary Chi­nese artist Huang Hai. The results are purrfect.

Glob­al release poster, designed by The Ein­stein Couple

Lars von Tri­er has form when it comes to provoca­tive poster design. In fact, The Ein­stein Cou­ple also con­jured up the posters for Nympho­ma­ni­ac, as well as the bizarre char­ac­ter one-sheets for his lat­est. Even so, it’s this hell­ish tableau which stands out, suit­ably sug­ges­tive of what the film actu­al­ly entails.

US fes­ti­val poster

There’s no UK release date con­firmed for Alex Ross Perry’s punk dra­ma yet, but this colour­ful gig poster from its US fes­ti­val run is pret­ty great all the same. The block let­ter­ing and grainy detail stay true to the film’s 90s aes­thet­ic, and the ​‘SS’ logo refers to Becky (Elis­a­beth Moss)’s band, Some­thing She.

Teas­er poster, designed by Vasilis Mar­matakis

Vasilis Mar­matakis has designed all the art­work for Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ films since Dog­tooth. Last year we spoke high­ly of his The Killing of a Sacred Deer effort, and we’re just as fond of his unnerv­ing col­lage effort this year. Also, that title treat­ment is just dreamy.

US teas­er poster, designed by B O N D

The lat­est from Jacques Audi­ard won’t ride into UK cin­e­mas until spring 2019, but we’re big fans of the US art­work, from Gijs Kujiper’s want­ed poster design to this styl­ish and sim­ple offer­ing, which seems to imply that death fol­lows Char­lie and Eli Sis­ters every­where they go…

Glob­al release poster, designed by Empire Design

Posi­tion­ing Joaquin Phoenix’s trou­bled hit­man Joe as a ghost-like fig­ure at the cen­tre of his own sto­ry feels appro­pri­ate giv­en the title of Lynne Ramsay’s film, but the over­lay of two images also feels like a mod­ern take on a pulp fic­tion cover.

Teas­er poster, designed by Per­ci­val + Associates

All of the posters for Alfon­so Cuarón’s Roma are pret­ty stun­ning, but this one – with its can­ny use of neg­a­tive space and con­trast between the black and white and gold­en title – is the best. The image of two young chil­dren lying down as a plane glides by over­head is a seem­ing­ly triv­ial snap­shot of child­hood, but in Cuarón’s hands, it’s is ele­vat­ed into some­thing beautiful.

Glob­al release poster, designed by Per­ci­val + Associates

‘Ele­gant’ and ​‘sim­ple’ aren’t usu­al­ly the words that spring to mind when you see a poster for a late-stage Schrad­er film (see: Dog Eat Dog, Dying of the Light). But hey, Schrader’s full of sur­pris­es, as First Reformed proved. The con­trast between the black space and the flames bisect­ing Ethan Hawke’s pen­sive vis­age make this one of the most strik­ing posters we’ve seen this year.

US teas­er poster, designed by Ken­ny Grav­il­lis (Grav­il­lis Inc)

The final art­work for Spike Lee’s explo­sive film was great too, but noth­ing beats this arrest­ing image of John David Wash­ing­ton masked by a Ku Klux Klan hood, which first intro­duced BlacK­kKlans­man​‘s mar­ket­ing cam­paign. Reflect­ing the film’s knot­ty pol­i­tics in a sin­gle image,

Chi­nese release poster, designed by Huang Hai

We’ve already fea­tured one Huang poster on this list, but he’s had a pret­ty remark­able year. In his design for Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters, he reimag­ines one of the film’s great­est scenes as a tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese tapes­try, and the result is this stun­ning piece which we’d be hap­py to hang above the mantelpiece.