Every great movie needs a great movie poster, and such was the case this year with “Call Me By Your Name,” “Lady Bird,” “Get Out,” “The Shape of Water,” and many more. As part of IndieWire’s year in review, we look back at the 40 film posters that caught our eye and never left our heads this year.
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s family drama finally premiered in U.S. theaters after first debuting at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich called it one of his very best efforts to date.
“All These Sleepless Nights” was the documentary stunner of the year, blending fact and fiction to tell a Polish-set coming-of-age story like no other. Indiewire named it one of the best non-fiction features of the 21st century.
Hong Sang-soo has mastered the art of contemplation in cinema, and this teaser poster for the Kim Min-hee-starring “On The Beach Alone At Night” does Sang-soo’s entire oeuvre justice.
Edgar Wright’s “Baby Driver” became his biggest U.S. box office hit over the summer. Before Sony started marketing the film with the faces of Ansel Elgort and Jamie Foxx, they dropped stylish posters like this one that told you everything you needed to know about “Baby Driver”: Guns, cars, and audio waves. Buckle up.
The exploitation joys of Ana Lily Amirpour’s badass revenge flick “The Bad Batch” were perfectly summed up in this clever one-sheet from NEON.
Sofia Coppola went back to her “Marie Antoinette” roots with “The Beguiled” poster, which combined the film’s period setting with a punch of bright modernity.
Warner Bros. did the right thing and stepped aside to let Roger Deakins’ jaw-dropping cinematography lead the way in this “Blade Runner 2049” teaser poster.
The “Brigsby Bear” poster is the perfect warning that this Kyle Mooney-led indie is one weird trip.
Sony Pictures Classics was smart to tout all the praise “Call Me By Your Name” received at Sundance on its debut poster, but the image was all anyone really needed to put the film on their watch list. The sight of Timothée Chalamet resting his head on Armie Hammer’s shoulder against a solid blue sky is truly a dream.
“Colossal” was the kind of movie that was impossible to sell to people, but NEON did Nacho Vigolando’s monster movie justice with this inventive teaser poster. The image hints at both the monster-human connection at the film’s center and the brash personality of its hero.
We were buying whatever concoction 20th Century Fox was trying to sell with their creepy “A Cure For Wellness” teaser poster.
The catchphrase. The ill-placed boom microphone. The prosthetics that make you ask, “Wait, is that really James Franco?” The first poster for “The Disaster Artist” was another slice of A24 perfection.
Anyone who’s ever had film on the brain will certainly relate to this poster for Michael Almereyda’s documentary on “Blade Runner” producer and co-writer Hampton Fancher.
Part of what makes “The Florida Project” so magical is how director Sean Baker visualizes his impoverished setting through the colorful, optimistic eyes of his six-year-old protagonist. A24 wisely made sure the poster did the same exact thing.
Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” channeled the one-sheet for “La Haine” with this striking poster. Both films are studies of race that will make your skin crawl and your blood boil.
A24 marketed David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” with all the cosmic intrigue it required. Sometimes all you have to do is put your title character on the poster and that’s enough to make something magical.
A24 continued their year of excellent teasers with this poster for Ben and Josh Safdie’s “Good Time.” Only after you see the movie does the Sprite bottle make glorious sense.
Ai Weiwei returned to the big screen this year with his sprawling documentary on the human refugee crisis. If you could sum up his movie in one image, this poster would do the trick.
Wes Anderson’s return to stop-motion animation is one of the most anticipated titles of 2018, and the official poster is a wall-to-wall canine love fest that proves way too irresistible.
Ice skates, cigarettes, and a punchy pink font express the proper in-your-face attitude of “I, Tonya” in this teaser poster.
A24 released this first “It Comes At Night” poster before anyone really knew what Trey Edward Schults’ new film was about. Looking back, the menacing ambiguity of the one-sheet perfectly captures what makes the film such a skin-crawler.
It was obvious the marketing for “Ingrid Goes West” was going to utilize the film’s social media hook, but not even that could prepare us for how great this Instagram-inspired poster turned out to be.
Every poster for “John Wick 2” was inventive, but something about this red hot teaser has always stood out from the pack.
Yorgos Lanthimos manages to flip the real world upside down with his peculiar aesthetic, and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” is no exception. Lanthimos’ most chilling film to date gets his most foreboding poster.
Just when you thought every blockbuster movie has the same crowded poster, Warner Bros. dropped this gorgeous “Kong Skull Island” poster, which feels like “Apocalypse Now” meets pop art “King Kong.”
Michael Almereyda’s meditation on relationships and technology gets a serene and troubling poster that puts its technological disruption front and center.
The most dissected poster of the year kicked off the madcap marketing for Darren Aronofsky’s polarizing “mother!” There are secrets hidden in every corner of this illustrated one-sheet, and the sight of Jennifer Lawrence holding her bloody heart got everyone talking.
Instead of relying on the looks of Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton, Netflix opted instead to market “Okja” with a bold image that summarized the all-too-timely conflict at the heart of Bong Joon-ho’s adventure.
Marketing the deadpan brilliance of Aki Kaurismäki is a big challenge, but somehow this wonderful illustration does the trick.
Curtains have often been a filmmaker’s best tool when trying to evoke a ghostly spirit (see Hitchcock in “Rebecca”), and Olivier Assayas’ “Personal Shopper” makes excellent use of this trope on its poster.
The gorgeous official poster for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” gives away one of the film’s biggest surprises: Forget Daniel Day-Lewis, this is Vicky Krieps’ story to dominate.
The “Proud Mary” poster is winner for two reason: It rocks its Blaxploitation roots with unabashed pleasure and teases the thrills that await when Taraji P. Henson becomes a major action star.
That nosebleed. Those eyes. The “Raw” poster perfectly sets your appetite up for one of the year’s best horror films.
Refusing to show Denzel Washington’s face is quite the bold choice, but that’s what makes this “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” poster so great. It’s not about the star, it’s about the character.
Anybody who thought the idea of a human woman falling in love with a male sea creature might be icky on the big screen was proven wrong with just this gorgeously swoon-worthy poster for “The Shape of Water.”
A dash of Saul Bass makes this poster for M. Night Shyamalan’s “Split” a genre delight.
The teaser poster for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” was so radically different than any one-sheet the franchise had ever debuted that we should’ve known Rian Johnson was going to deliver something truly unique right then and there.
Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie’s “The Void” was one of the year’s biggest genre delights. Usually knocking off Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do, but “The Void” is damn fearless.
War. What is it good for? Giving us another brilliant mo-cap performance from Andy Serkis, apparently.
Inspirational. Powerful. Badass. All of the feelings you’d end up experiencing during “Wonder Woman” were bottled up nicely in this gorgeous poster.