The thorn

JANUARY 2024

For this project, I created a surreal movie poster about a movie concept I created called “The Thorn.” The movie is a creepy movie about a murder mystery, so I wanted to try and emulate that in this poster.

MOVIE PLOT:

Besides their faces, identical twin sisters Allie and Elena (played by Sabrina Carpenter) couldn’t be any more different. Elena has it all: popular friends, she’s cheer captain, and her boyfriend (Drew Starkey) is the quarterback of the football team. Allie, on the other hand, is anti-social, nerdy, and gets bullied by Elena’s friends (Hunter Schafer and Sydney Sweeney). Though they share blood, Allie and Elena seem like strangers to each other. One fateful night, Elena has four friends over for a sleepover. In the morning, Allie is found stabbed to death in the backyard. Shocked, Elena makes it her mission to figure out which one of her friends killed her sister. As the investigation continues though, Elena’s true colors start to show, making her friends question if she’s who she really says she is.

Plot twist: Out of jealousy, Allie killed Elena and attempted to overtake her identity, desperate to feel like she was important. After her true identity was revealed, she goes on a rampage, killing everyone who ever wronged her, taking her revenge at last.

THE PROCESS:

MOODBOARD & SKETCHES:

ITERATIONS:

I really liked the idea of putting some hidden details in the reflection of the water, but at this point this was all about making sure the poster felt more real, because it still seemed too collage like for me.

I really love the concept of mixing pastels with darker/gory themes, so I was inspired by a lot of these images. In particular, the photograph by Petra Collins (shown with sketches) really caught my eye and I loved the imagery of betrayal within it.

At first, I really tried to do my original concept inspired by the Petra Collins photograph. However, as I kept doing it I just felt that the poster felt too photoshopped together, and it just wasn’t working the way I wanted it to.

At this point, I decided to change directions with my poster. Instead of going with the original idea, I thought that it might be interesting to incorporate some hidden themes of the plot twist within the movie. This concept went a lot smoother for me, and I began to refine it more and more.

FINAL POSTER: