6. Ghost Town
This is one of the few posters on this list that was actually made for a good film, but nevertheless lacked the invention to make anything of it. First and foremost, there's the shot of Gervais, which appears to have taken the most generic, stock image of a dentist possible, then nicked a still of Gervais mincing about at the Golden Gloves, and lazily mashed the two together. Given that there's very little else to go on, it appears that the studio felt confident that they could coast by on the actor's cheeky grin, surprising given that this was one of his first starring forays in Hollywood. Aside from the word "ghost", this poster gives the viewer absolutely no inkling about its supernatural narrative, and oddly doesn't feature the other stars, Tea Leoni and Greg Kinnear, whatsoever. Instead, their place is taken by some text, a quote from Gervais' character, which makes no sense outside of its context, and is one of the most baffling composition choices we've ever seen in a poster. Also, it'll probably make some people think that they couldn't get any good critic quotes, so they just used their own instead (as happened with the execrable Keith Lemon: The Film recently). This campaign probably goes to explain why, despite strong critical acclaim, the film only barely made back its budget.