The 20 Best Film Posters Of 2023

5. “Oppenheimer”
From trailers to posters, to taglines and more, all the media supporting Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” proved bold this year, And fitting for an uncompromising, three-hour drama, somehow just as gripping as any blockbuster released this year (which is probably why it almost made a billion dollars at the global box office). The IMAX poster featuring the bomb apparatus was certainly striking; the teaser poster with the words, “The world forever changes,” and a silhouette of Oppenheimer himself, emerging from a nuclear blast, was equally unsettling. But our fave is the blast experience poster; the moment when Oppenheimer, wearing those safety goggles, is just radiated with light and color, taking in the full force of his nuclear bomb and all that he has wrought. It’s an arresting, blinding image, the colors flying off the charts and a stark reminder to the character that what he is witnessing here— a deadly, furious moment of history—is just the beginning of the reckoning he inadvertently creates.

4. “Scream VI”
Horror posters are often either the best ones out there or rather rote ,and mainstream horror franchises aren’t especially known for their tasteful design in recent years. But all the posters for “Scream VI” were fire. The main “New York, New Rules” poster with Ghostface screaming out of a Subway window is chilling, the Fandango version has a great bloody color scheme, and the Dolby version, and this black and white alt, has a nice way to play on New York’s cityspace (this version’s play on Times Square is great too). But the Big Apple-ness of it all, the way “Scream VI” celebrates the way it haunts Manhattan and the five boroughs, a new location for the franchise, is made iconic by the Ghostface mask and scream, etching out and mimicking the look of an iconic New York MTA subway poster, suggesting, oh, you can run and take as many transfers as you want, but in this city? There’s simply nowhere to hide from the terror that awaits (too bad about your franchise moving forward, Spyglass).

3. “The Killer”
The less said about the opening credits of “The Killer,” the better (some love it, but it’s honestly almost a parody of David Fincher openings at this point), but its poster (posters), designed by Neil Kellerhouse (who does most of Fincher’s posters)  and illustrated by James Patterson, is well, Killer.  With a bullet hole in the “I,” in Killer, knocking it down, forcing you to look at the title closely,  the “execution is everything” tagline, this poster has so many elements that draw you in. From the way you’re staring down the barrel of Michael Fassbender’s gun as he points it at the viewer to the dark, dank, grisly colors and design, “The Killer” poster is what one might call “ugly beautiful.” It’s gorgeous really, but it’s not afraid to look and feel nihilistic and bleak, much like Fincher’s movie. Other versions of this poster are less minimalist, showing different scenes and characters from the movie, but still super compelling. 

2. “Zone Of Interest”
Immediately striking and beautiful, contrast is the name of the game here.  Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer (“Under The Skin”), the drama tackles, in many ways, the idea of Hannah Arendt’s famous line about the banality of evil. This notion is underscored in the film, which centers on a Auschwitz commandant and his wife as they strive to build a dream life next door to a concentration camp. The disparity and chilling distinction is made in the film, wealthy to-do privilege casually, indifferently doing its own things while thousands of others suffer and die right next door, the family turning a blind eye to all the atrocities occurring adjacent to them. And the poster, designed by Neil Kellerhouse and his Kellerhouse company, leans into that divide with two contradistinct images, the affluence of the Nazi backyard evening soiree and a frighteningly black empty sky.

1. “Poor Things”
Designed by Greek artist Vasilis Marmatakis, who also created the striking posters for Yorgos Lanthimos‘ “The Lobster” and “The Killing Of A Sacred Deer” (both of which were on our best-of poster lists of those respective years), he returns for the Greek Weird Wave filmmaker’s weird and wonderful “Poor Things.” The fantastical tale about the incredible evolution of a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist, “Poor Things” has obvious Frankenstein allusions, but it’s also just funny, strange, and bizarre in the purely original Lanthimos way. Marmatakis designed three posters for the film, all of them delightfully unusual, many of them featuring corporeal elements to denote Emma Stone’s characters transformation. But our fave is the simplest, expressing just how amusingly odd Stone is in the movie: a close shot of her face, staring forward blankly, red lipstick smudged on her face, and blue and purple paint smeared just under each eyebrow for extra oddball measure. 

Honorable Mentions and more on page 2.