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No movie genre has quite the emotional impact of horror. While dramas can make us cry and comedies get us laughing, horror has a difficult task. They need to get their audience to suspend disbelief and be terrified by something we know isn’t real. This requires filmmakers to craft a compelling story filled with characters whose fate is worth caring about.
A great horror movie also needs a scary-as-hell villain who seems to come through the screen and gnaw on our own fears. The best horror films are packed with suspense and an unforgettable ending. However, for horror to truly work, it must grab you by the throat from the get-go and refuse to let go. These 10 scary movies perfected the opening scene better than any other.
1
‘Friday the 13th Part 2’ (1981)
The first Friday the 13th is a simple yet effective slasher, with a mysterious killer attacking a group of teens at Camp Crystal Lake. With the revealed villain, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), getting her head chopped off by the final girl, Alice Hardy (Adrienne King), at the end, it meant there’d be a new killer for the sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2. Months after the events of the first movie, Alice is at home alone when she opens the fridge to find the head of Mrs. Voorhees. It’s then that Jason Voorhees appears from behind, murdering our hero. In one scene, an iconic final girl is killed, and a slasher legend is born.
2
‘Ghost Ship’ (2002)
Ghost Ship isn’t a great movie. Still, it has one of the most talked-about opening scenes of all time — one so well-crafted that it was impossible to follow. The film begins on the deck of an ocean liner, where the rich party it up as young Katie Harwood (Emily Browning) watches the festivities. Then it happens: a cable snaps and flings across the deck. At first, nothing is changed. But as Katie looks up into the captain’s face, only to see half of his head slide off, what has occurred becomes disturbingly clear. The audience watches as, one by one, every single person beside Katie comes apart in a pool of blood.
3
‘Final Destination’ (2000)
The premise of Final Destination is so perfect that it birthed a franchise that is still going strong today. What if the killer in a horror movie was not a masked man but death itself? The first movie showed how to pull it off with its tense opening scene. After a group of high schoolers board a plane for a trip to France, the aircraft explodes, killing everyone on board. It’s then that Alex (Devon Sawa) snaps to attention in his seat. The explosion was not real but a premonition. After his freaking out gets him and his friends kicked off the flight, they watch in horror from the ground as the plane blows up.
4
‘Midsommar’ (2019)
Ari Aster‘s Midsommar, just like Hereditary, is a disturbing exploration of grief, with Dani (Florence Pugh) taking a trip to a Swedish festival, where she and her friends meet a deadly cult. What causes Dani to want to get away in the first place is a highly uncomfortable opening scene. Dani has a mentally ill sister named Terri who keeps leaving her sister disturbing messages. This is followed by the camera entering the home of their parents, where mom and dad are dead in bed from carbon monoxide. We then see Terri, her face blackened, and a hose taped to her mouth. Aster immediately jumps to Dani, who screams the most pained wail you’ll ever hear.
5
‘Black Christmas’ (1974)
Bob Clark‘s Black Christmas is one of the greatest slashers ever made. The first five minutes show the audience what they’re in for by beginning with the point-of-view of the killer as he scales the trellis of a sorority house at night. Once inside the attic, completely unseen by his future victims, the calls begin. Ghostface has nothing on this guy, who takes on several different voices, sounding like a man and a woman in the same sentence and going from calm to disturbing. Before he hangs up, he matter-of-factly tells Barb (Margot Kidder), “I’m going to kill you.” He isn’t lying.
6
‘It’ (2017)
It had a lot to live up to in 2017 thanks to Tim Curry‘s masterful performance as Pennywise the clown from the 1990 miniseries. How do you follow such an iconic role? Casting a great actor in Bill Skarsgård is step one. Still, just because he’s so talented doesn’t mean he could hold a candle to what Curry accomplished. The first scene, however, showed that he was arguably even better. His Pennywise, with his lazy eye and drooling through his buck teeth, feels more alien. Curry is disturbing, but Skarsgård is scary as hell.
7
‘It Follows’ (2015)
It Follows feels like Halloween meets A Nightmare on Elm Street, with an original twist. In this film, our protagonists are stalked by a slow-moving entity passed on through sex. Before we know any of this, though, comes a confusing and unnerving scene. In it, a half-dressed woman named Annie (Bailey Spry) runs out of her house still wearing high heels. Who caught her so off guard? We can’t see who is chasing her, but she can. After taking off in her car and calling her dad to apologize, the next scene jolts to the following morning. Annie lies dead on a beach, her leg snapped in half. Who, or what, could do this?
8
‘Halloween’ (1978)
John Carpenter‘s Halloween ushered in the slasher craze that would dominate the horror genre in the ’80s. It also introduces Michael Myers. The audience first meets him in the opening scene, but it’s not as a grown man wearing his signature white mask. Instead, we first land in 1963. In a brilliant one-shot, the POV of someone moves through a dark house on Halloween night. After putting on a clown mask, they stab a teenage girl to death in her bedroom before walking back outside, where a bewildered man says, “Michael?” and pulls off the mask. There stands the boogeyman, not as an adult but as a six-year-old, his features blank. A new evil has just been born.
9
‘Jaws’ (1975)
Steven Spielberg was still a little-known director when he made Jaws over half a century ago. Five decades later, it’s remembered as one of the greatest horror movies ever made, one that works so well by showing so little. Because of animatronic malfunctions, Spielberg had to hide the great white shark as much as possible. This led to scene after scene of the audience’s fear of the unknown taking over, with John Williams‘ masterful score becoming the monster. This is expertly shown in the first five minutes as poor Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) goes for a solo swim at night, when something latches on to her leg under the water. As she is pulled back and forth, Chrissie screams her lungs out for help, only to be silenced forever as she’s sucked beneath the blackness.
10
‘Scream’ (1996)
Wes Craven was very well known in 1996 as the genius behind A Nightmare on Elm Street and several other classics. With Scream, he reignited the dead slasher fad and launched a new franchise. Working with Kevin Williamson‘s meta script, Scream opens on Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) home alone at night when a man calls. He quickly goes from flirting and talking about his favorite horror movies to playing a violent game with Casey that she will lose. Before it’s all over, Casey will be brutally murdered in a shocking twist, as the character we thought was our final girl ends up being the first victim. If this is how intense the beginning is, what else can happen?!
- Release Date
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December 20, 1996
- Runtime
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112 minutes
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Shawn Van Horn
Almontather Rassoul
