The 50 coolest posters of 2013 so far

As it happens, Evil Dead is not even in the top five most terrifying movies I've ever experienced, but it's a bold claim, just not entirely accurate. Note that it's not even a poster quote – they were just bigging themselves up.

Terrible action movie posters are a dime a dozen (oh hey there Olympus Has Fallen) but the White House Down campaign is a peach: a subdued colour palette, characters taking precedence over landmarks and a refusal to hide its Die Hard credentials under a flak-jacket.

It's a good job I wasn't planning on sleeping tomorrow night, either.

Seemingly a thriller without a hook (dunno, didn't see it), Dead Man Down's international campaign was all over the shop – check IMPawards.com if you don't believe me. However, this Italian poster is a triumph of style over content, giving the film a look it probably doesn't deserve.

Long legs are something of a poster staple, but they're not being used to titillate in this desaturated one-sheet for the porn biopic – instead, they're demurely crossed to form an 'X', saving us from some terrible visual blowjob pun that someone at the studio almost definitely pitched.

I don't really know what I'm looking at, but all I know is that the inside of Toby Jones' actual head probably isn't all that dissimilar.

It'd be a shame for Pixar to put all that hard work into creating a colourful and vibrant universe in Monsters Universe and then not put it on the poster – a glorious reminder that no one is capable of catching the eye better than them.

An amateur effort here – literally, I'm not being mean – as this clever design was picked as a competition winner. It's way more effective than the official designs, which were too boring and too self-consciously wacky by half. Joss would surely approve (Shakey too, probably).

Moody, mysterious and oozing with malevolence, this is the perfect tease for Ben Wheatley's Civil War head-scratcher. Even the film's most recognisable star, Michael Smiley, is hidden under a hat: that's devotion to a design. Nice touch that the poster features more colour than the film.

A fairly lovely concept for what appears to be, on the surface at least, a cookie-cutter animated romp. You can practically feel the rays of sun yourself, even if it probably is just a still from the movie all dressed up.

Capturing the "OH FUCK" moment from the trailer, this Gravity teaser is nightmarish in its simplicity, visualising the moment the cord that connects life and death is disconnected. The motion blur is a tad distracting, but a little abstraction never did anyone any harm. For once, Futura is justified.

Star Trek Into Darkness wins the prize for worst overall campaign this year with a series of unfocused, inconsistent character posters – but this teaser almost makes up for it. It's not the first poster to feature a villain with his back to the camera, but the Starfleet insignia cut-out is a neat touch and the smoking skyline is a nice inclusion.

Full marks all round. The composition is perfect, the mood is captured effortlessly, the colour scheme is striking and – most importantly – it's instantly recognisable as a 300 movie. That's no mean feat, given that to date there has only been one of them.

The sequel to The Hunger Games has had the most interesting poster campaign of the year – if not the most effective – but this image of Katniss astride a mountain with the gods seemingly in her favour is a tantalising morsel of things to come. Even the Instagram colour filter works.

Here we have a poster that looks like it should be branded 'NSFW', but it only features a suggestion of sex than anything outright naughty. It's a daring design that takes a while to process fully, and though it might not work logistically (how long are his arms?) it remains a bracing image.

Ignore that terrible title treatment and marvel at a poster that needs nothing more than two pairs of lips to convey a tone. Incredibly, both actors are recognisable by their kissy-faces alone, while the extreme close-up and hot pink colour scheme suggests a snapshot of illicit behaviour.

Fortune favours the bold, and while Paramount chickened out for the international poster, sticking Brad Pitt front and centre, this teaser for their $200m zombie film sold the movie way more accurately. Also note: this poster actually features zombies, if you can imagine such a thing.

It's a fanny.

Oh my Gos! Just gorgeous imagery at play here – even without the chiselled cheekbones of R.Gos, the Only God Forgives poster is drenched in hotness. That pink/purple/blue combo returns (could it be the new blue/orange?), a cute nod to the electric pink of the Drive title treatment.

The poster so amazing, Fox claim half of them were stolen from bus stops. Like fuck they were, but you can appreciate the sentiment, because this sumi ink rendition of Wolverine distils the character into his core elements: claws, muscles and hair. You can reach out and touch the texture.

Danny Boyle teased the idea of using glitch art in his 127 Hours poster, but the idea is turned up to 11 here: a full-volume headfuck that's exactly as trippy as the movie. It's a brave/foolish move to distort the face of your star beyond recognition, but hot damn it's an arresting image.

Blue/purple again, combining to make Elijah Wood not just a little creepy but full-blown cross-the-street material. The inherent creepiness of mannequins is maximised, while the bag over the head – and Wood's quizzical expression – is extremely unsettling to say the least.

Just the perfect confluence of subject matter, motif and tagline. A fun concept stunningly realised, it works on so many levels – even the will.i.am-esque hashtag title, usually the kiss of death, seems to fit.

Wait, what? Look closer. In a frankly genius move to market home invasion thriller You're Next, Lions Gate overlaid a 'reflection' of that movie's masked villain on posters of their other, less horror-related releases. That explains this poster for The Big Wedding with a completely terrifying killer wearing a pig mask staring right through it. Gutsy marketing and then some.

Spring Breakers is a marketing department's dream: sexy, nubile young girls in bikinis brandishing guns and a 'fuck you' attitude. However, though that furrow was indeed ploughed, the Spring Breakers poster campaign was otherwise utterly inspired. Rather than putting the emphasis on the girls' bodies, this amazing alternate one-sheet actually covers them up with ski-masks and trackpants (albeit with 'DTF' emblazoned on their butts) as 'villain' James Franco serenades them at sunset with a blast of Britney.