Yellow in Horror – The Power of a Yellow Wardrobe

Chapter 6

The opening of Scream VI set the stage for NYC. We were no longer in Woodsboro. Enter Samara Weaving clad in a bright yellow body-hugging dress as she waited nervously at a bar for her character’s date to meet her. The dress said many things in that moment. How bright she was in the dimly lit bar, a hip professor who knew what she had to offer on the verge of a possible relationship. Of a sunny future. Even as her phone rang and the date convinced her to move outside, the dress radiated hope. At least until he somehow convinced her to move into a vacant, dark alley. Alone.

That yellow dress, once as sexy as it was sunny, was now a warning. A cautionary tale of how blinded we are by the hope of a good date. Don’t get too attached to this one, the dress tells the viewer now. She’s just here to be the first sacrifice of many to a plot filled with revenge. We should have known better. After all, Drew Barrymore and that blonde wig had us all fooled at the beginning of the first movie.

Samara Weaving and that yellow dress are also the perfect opening to what I’m discussing today. Yellow clothing in horror films can convey many things. Hope. Loss of innocence. Moral decay. Follow along with me while I talk through some great examples.

Twins of Evil

I only recently discovered this Hammer Horror gem starring Peter Cushing and real life twins Mary and Madeleine Collinson as Maria and Frieda. The two twins move in with their uncle whose home is near a castle rumored to be occupied by vampires. What I noticed right away was the amount of green in the film. The trees have moss growing on them. Green wardrobes on characters, including matching velvet dresses for the twins when they arrive. Even the shadows look green. This sets the tone for the underlying evil and hate within the place. Not just with the vampires, but with the religious Brotherhood who terrorize the local population with misguided blame and who burn random women at the stake.

Enter Frieda who more than once wears a bright yellow dress. It stands out so much surrounded by all that green and the black of the robed Brotherhood members that it’s hard not to notice her. The cleavage helps too. She is lured to the castle and bitten by the resident vampire and is turned. Frieda uses that pretty dress to lure another man into a cave where she feeds on him. Her sister Maria never wore such a yellow dress or sought out the vampire, so in this instance that dress was a warning in the context of the religious tropes on display. This woman will do anything she wants and you better start clutching those pearls. When Frieda is finally caught feeding, she now wears a dark blue dress. Whatever innocence she had is gone, forgotten with that yellow dress. Uncle Cushing, head of the Brotherhood, is going to be very disappointed.

The Substance

Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle covered her insecurities about her age and place in society with a bright yellow peacoat, something that should have been far too warm for southern California’s climate. She wrapped it around herself like a shield. A comfort. A place to hide. To disappear within. Even as she gave up half of herself, the part of her that still felt young and free and beautiful in the form of Sue, that coat was still the place she chose to hide in when she went out of her apartment.

Margaret Qualley’s Sue is a brilliant piece of masterful acting. She’s everything Elisabeth used to be. During the scene where she looks for a place within the apartment to hide Elisabeth’s body away, she wears a sexy little yellow shirt. She doesn’t need to hide in it, not like that yellow coat. The color ties the two versions of the woman together, but shows their differences in confidence.

In the context of this brilliant take on how women are treated in society as they age, that yellow coat represents many things. Comfort, yes, but also lost youth and the pain that comes with knowing you are past your prime. It is Elisabeth Sparkle’s shield against the harsh light of the world, but it cannot protect her from it. Even when Sue took everything Elisabeth had leaving her with a crumpled shell of a body, Elisabeth still retreated to that coat so she could retrieve the black substance that would put an end to the whole thing. With that, the coat represents not only Elisabeth’s separation from society, but from Sue as well. Remember, they were supposed to be one. Neither of them thought of that until it was too late and they only truly became one when their vanity turned them into a monster.

Crimson Peak

In Guillermo Del Toro’s take on gothic romance and twisted relationships, the director used costuming just as much as location and set pieces to set the tone of his most underrated film. Mia Wasikowska’s blonde haired Edith wore not one, but several different yellow costumes. The first was a yellow jacket she wore over her dress when she presented her story to a newspaper. The second, a velvet robe she wore at home when she chose not to go to a ball. The third, a dress she wore when with her new husband. These costumes show her as the heroine of the film. She shining light in a dark and gothic world. They also show her naivety when it came to her new husband and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain).

In contrast, Lucille paired her character’s dark hair with high-necked Victorian dresses covered in dark laces. The colors were rich royal blue, deep blood red, and the deepest blacks. She is the antithesis of Edith. Where Edith is the light, Lucille is the darkness. Their clothing styles represent this throughout the film as much as their actions. After all, it is Lucille who holds up a dying yellow butterfly to Edith’s face and says, “Beautiful things are the most fragile. At home we have only black moths.” This should have been Edith’s cue to not follow Lucille and her brother to their home, Crimson Peak.

Smile 2

When Lewis answers the door in that yellow and white striped robe, Skye Riley should have ran away. If anything on today’s list screamed CAUTION, that robe was it. His behavior was a red flag too. She should have ran the moment he put the sword to her neck. Instead, she stayed to get her pain killers and the smile demon was passed on to her when he killed himself.

Later, when her life is on the brink of falling apart and she is back in the hospital, she escapes her blood soaked hospital room with a light yellow sweatshirt covering her hospital gown soaked in what she thinks is her mother’s blood. Her own face is on the sweatshirt showing us that Skye Riley can never escape her trauma. That sweatshirt was supposed to hide her issues until she escaped the hospital. Instead, it shows that she is the problem right there in screen printed black ink. Trauma and guilt are inescapable. Doctor, this girl needs a new brain.

Twice she wears the butterfly stage outfit with the yellow wings covered in sparkles. When she first tries it on, the now dead drug dealing friend in his yellow striped robe appeared behind her in a mirror and forced her to smile. She refuses to ever wear it again saying it shows the scar that runs the length of her stomach through the fabric. It was meant to be her rebirth outfit dog her new tour. A butterfly born from something ugly. And Skye hates it. At the end of the film, she is wearing that very outfit again as she exits that metal chrysalis like an out of its mind human butterfly. She has an entire arena of fans to pass the smile demon on to as she kills herself with her own microphone. Yellow in this film is a cautionary tale of mental decay and unresolved trauma. A color that foreshadows something terrible hidden behind our guilt.

The Wicker Man (1973)

There are few things more disturbing than watching Christopher Lee bring Lord Summerisle to life in the original The Wicker Man. He so convincingly conveys what must be done, on who his fellow islanders (followers, villagers, cultists) must sacrifice. Lord Summerisle believes so deeply in this way of thinking that one can’t help but wonder what caused him or his people to hold such beliefs. It had to be more than bad crops, right?

I bring up this film for the sequence of events leading up to the climax during which Christopher Lee wears a bright yellow sweater. It stands out against the light purple robe he wears in the parade and when he puts on his tailored jacket later. Here, the yellow signifies his disturbed thought process. How morally corrupt he has become in his beliefs. The costumed people around him are equally creepy. Kudos to those in charge of developing the costumes for this film because there is some real artistry. From the animal costumes to the robes, not detail is missed. It is just off-putting enough to get the point across without being cheesy.

Throughout the film there are yellow articles of clothing. From the sweaters that some of the children wear to the wicker man himself being lit afire, yellow shows how deeply rooted the moral decay is in that society. It is taught from birth. If horror movies tell us anything, it is being raised in such an environment usually has dire consequences for someone innocent.

A Quiet Place: Day One

Lupita Nyong’o plays a terminal cancer patient when the noise hating aliens land in NYC. She wears a yellow sweater which signifies both her body’s physical illness and the mental strain chronic pain can put on a person. It’s a comfort to her, that sweater. Something worn by someone she loved and passed on to her. As the movie progresses, it becomes a beacon of hope and solidarity with new friend, Eric. She finds a way to save his life and manages to go out on her own terms which is a choice she didn’t have before. Here, yellow had dual meanings but unlike many on this list, it’s used more hopefully in the third film released in this franchise.

Nope

In Jordan Peele’s underrated film, Nope, Gordy the chimp wears a yellow sweater during a filming of a fictional sitcom, Gordy’s Home. The scene is a flashback and meant as backstory for Jupe’s character who is played by Steven Yeun as an adult. When a balloon pops suddenly, the chimp loses his cool and attacks the entire cast with the exception of Jupe who is only a kid in the scene. As the chimp rampages, Jupe hides under a table. The chimp’s yellow sweater is soon stained with red blood, the two colors in stark contrast with each other. Thematically, this shows that wild animals can’t be tamed and don’t like being taken advantage of by humans which parallels with Jupe trying to tame the alien craft into scheduled shows for tourists later in the movie to his own detriment.

When Jupe is performing at his UFO show, his employees are wearing yellow polo shirts for uniforms. I believe this is a throwback to Jupe’s lost childhood and acting career. Instead of being a successful child actor, he is remembered as the kid who survived the chimp attack and is running a Wild Wild West sideshow in the desert dressed in a cheesy red suit before finally being killed by the alien craft he had tried to tame. Hubris on full display.

The Ugly Stepsister

This 2025 French horror film tells the Cinderella fairytale from the oldest stepsister’s perspective. Elvira is deemed ugly. Hooked nose. Overweight, but only barely. She has her nose fixed with medieval tools. Swallows a tapeworm egg to lose weight. All to win the heart of the Prince who is apparently incapable of remembering what a woman looks like without fitting a lost shoe on her foot (that always bothered me with this story). Thin, nose fixed, hair falling out, Elvira dons a green and yellow dress and a blonde wig. She looks the part. Except so does Cinderella. When Elvira gets home lost in disappointment, she cuts off her toes to fit into Cinderella’s lost slipper. Her mother does the other foot not that it’ll matter. Elvira rolls down the stairs and breaks her new nose and chips a tooth when the Prince arrives. Now she’s uglier than ever.

That yellow and green ball gown had double meaning. The green was the envy she had for the beautiful women around her for the entire film while they told her she was gross. The yellow was the envy turning sour within her. Internal rot. Moral decay. And that tapeworm. Her little sister gives her the antidote and she retches up the longest tapeworm you’ll ever see. It’s then that these two sisters realize that pretty on the outside will never get you what you want if you’re ugly on the inside. They abandon their mother to her escapades and flee, that yellow and green dress forgotten along with the girl’s amputated toes.

Currently streaming on Shudder if you haven’t seen this horrifying fairytale that’s truer to the actual fairytale than anything Disney will ever make.

Talk to Me

The main character in this film, Mia, wore yellow in almost every scene. First, she wore a yellow fleece jacket that kept her warm in a world that had turned a cold shoulder to her. Second, she wore a pale yellow undershirt to a party and her decision to allow her friend’s little brother to use the hand that connected them to those beyond the grave would lead to the sleeves of that shirt getting stained with his blood. The third is a black t-shirt with yellow accents for she was with a friend. Someone she felt safe with, so the need for the yellow was lessoned. The fourth was a yellow button-down shirt she wore to the hospital during an attempt to save her friend’s brother.

All of these represent the character’s desire to feel safe and comfortable despite her own grief and guilt about her mother’s death even as another tragedy unfolds around her. The yellow clothing also represents her loss of innocence when she realizes it is her fault her friend is in the hospital. As she mentally descends into a kind of madness, unable to trust what she sees, Mia loses the yellow clothing entirely. In her final scenes, she is in a white tank top. All innocence and comfort have been stripped away leaving her bare.

Of these eight films, each tells their own color story through costume. If there is a character in a brightly colored article of yellow clothing in a horror movie, you should take notice. Films meant to be so dark are very careful how they use color. It is almost always intentional and full of meaning.