When Ghost Ship was released in 2002, audiences were gripped by the elaborately staged opening sequence, where an entire cruise ship is taken out in one fell (and gruesome) swoop. It’s a scene that remains impressive to this day, but, as Entertainment Weekly noted in our review, it “never recaptures the eerie pizzazz of the prologue.”
Let’s face it: Sometimes an opening scene is just too good.
This is especially true when it comes to horror movies, where the desire to shock and hook the audience can end up eclipsing the remaining runtime. Both good and bad films alike can be guilty of crafting an indelible opening sequence that makes everything else pale in comparison.
Whether it’s Drew Barrymore’s unforgettable opening scene in Scream (1996) or the bloodthirsty little girl who kicks off Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004), these 10 horror movies peaked with their opening scenes.
01 of 10
Scream (1996)
Drew Barrymore as Casey Becker in ‘Scream’
Credit: Everett
There’s no contesting that Scream is a great film. Still, that opening scene with Drew Barrymore is not just a hallmark of horror movie history — it’s a near-perfect piece of filmmaking. Barrymore plays high school student Casey Becker, who’s relaxing at home one night when she receives a phone call from an anonymous man with one pressing question: “What’s your favorite scary movie?”
Casey is initially unfazed, assuming this be a wrong number. Eventually, though, the caller reveals that he’s watching her, and she realizes that her life is in danger. The scene swiftly devolves into a cat-and-mouse chase between Ghostface and poor Casey.
Director Wes Craven executes a masterclass in tension, shock, and subverting expectations. Though the rest of the film is an excellent horror satire, the opening scene is pure sleight of hand. Of course, we all know what becomes of Casey, and it’s what made Scream such a draw in 1996: Barrymore, a massive star who was featured on prominently on the poster and in the film’s marketing, is killed off during this 12-minute opening sequence.
02 of 10
Final Destination 2 (2003)
Jonathan Cherry as Rory Peters in ‘Final Destination 2’
An ongoing joke about Final Destination 2 is that it made a generation of filmgoers terrified to drive behind a logging truck. Even if you never saw the movie, you might know what we’re talking about — you only had to see the trailer, after all.
The second movie in the long-running franchise about cheating Death opens with a barn-burner of a sequence for a series that prides itself on creative kills. On the road headed for Daytona beach, teenager Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) has a vision of her and her friends crashing into a deadly pile-up caused by timber coming loose from a logging truck.
In the vision, the logs smash into everything, causing cars to crash and flip into the air until nothing remains but a bloody, fiery blaze. The remainder of the film is not only unable to live up to the heights of the first film — lacking the same verve and ingenuity — but it also doesn’t come close to living up to that terrifying opening scene.
Speaking to The Ringer about that legendary sequence, franchise creator Jeffrey Reddick said it came to him after he got nervous to drive behind a truck on the highway.
“You try to think of things that everyday people can relate to,” he explained. “I think that’s probably why it clicked so quickly—because I’m driving on high alert and hating it. You never know what other drivers are going to do.”
03 of 10
Ghost Ship (2002)
Death and destruction aboard the doomed vessel of ‘Ghost Ship’
Ghost Ship features what could very well be cinema history’s largest possible drop-off in terms of overall quality. The movie opens with truly stunning set piece that takes place in 1962 on the MS Antonia Graza, a luxury ocean liner.
One night, passengers are having a ball on the dance floor when a mysterious passenger tightens a nearby metal cable. It snaps and rips across the room, slicing through everyone — except for a young girl named Katie Harwood (Emily Browning).
Bloody, disturbing, shocking, and entertaining as hell, the Ghost Ship opening couldn’t be any more different from the absolute slog that follows it, climaxing on a muddled and overly complicated ending. Part of the reason for the downturn in quality seems to be extensive rewrites that turned what was first a psychological horror story into a slasher flick.
04 of 10
The Happening (2008)
Cornell Womack as a construction worker in ‘The Happening’
Regardless of whether you feel The Happening is a truly terrible movie or not, few would deny that its opening is killer.
M. Night Shyamalan’s infamous horror movie about Plants That Want to Kill You opens on an ordinary day at a city construction site. Everything changes when one worker falls from above and dies in what appears to be a horrific accident.
Then, another worker falls. And another. Soon, other people start falling, too. Pedestrians around the construction site are screaming. Cars are honking. The sounds of fear and panic begin to rise. But when one of the workers looks up, he realizes that these people are choosing to jump to their deaths.
It’s an undeniably chilling scene, and the mystery surrounding why people were dying by suicide in such a manner drove massive intrigue. Audiences were hoping for a great Shyamalan twist, but they didn’t get another Sixth Sense or Signs.
Maybe the only thing scarier than the opening scene of The Happening is Mark Wahlberg attempting to earnestly and fearfully talk to a plant.
05 of 10
Smile (2022)
Caitlin Stasey as Laura Weaver in ‘Smile’
It’s usually a bad sign when the opening of a new horror movie is what dominates the marketing. And while the rest of “What if The Ring but about a Demon That Makes You Smile Creepy” is sufficiently entertaining, it can’t top those first few minutes — which, fittingly, originated as a standalone short film.
A desperate PhD student named Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) meets with therapist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) after witnessing her professor kill himself. Laura insists that she’s not crazy and that she’s begun seeing visions of an evil entity that only she can see, which appears menacingly in the faces of various smiling people. She tells Rose that she is going to die next.
Rose tries to reason with Laura. Then Laura starts choking. She suddenly stops, smiles horrifically at Rose, and cuts her own throat. This act, we come to learn, passes the Smile demon on to Rose.
The rest of the film is essentially an attempt to recreate the shock and tension of that first scene over and over, with increasingly diminishing returns. The sequel, Smile 2, manages to have a bit more fun with its ridiculous premise.
06 of 10
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Sarah Polley as Ana in ‘Dawn of the Dead’
Director Zack Snyder was years away from his infamous Justice League cut when he emerged from the music video mines to direct a remake of Dawn of the Dead. But how, exactly, was he going to pull off a reimagining of one of the most celebrated horror movies of all time?
The answer is “badly,” but the opening sequence still goes hard. We see Nurse Ana (Sarah Polley) return home from working the night shift, during which a patient admitted for a simple bar fight received head scans and was sent to the ICU.
Ana mostly shrugs it off and heads home to her husband, Luis (Louis Ferreira). The couple go to bed, only to wake up to the sight of a neighborhood girl with a bloody mouth in their bedroom. The zombie girl bites Luis, and it becomes an all-out battle for Ana to escape her suddenly bloodthirsty husband.
The real fun happens outside, where Ana navigates the destruction the zombie plague has wrought on her peaceful suburban neighborhood — but not before a neighbor tries to steal her car and gets pancaked by an ambulance.
The extended sequence is a dynamic escalation of chaos and fear, and even features a clever bait-and-switch with some snoozing emergency med techs early on. Unfortunately, the remainder of the movie struggles with character development while living in the shadow of original Dawn director George A. Romero’s scathing commentary on American consumerism.
07 of 10
The Ring (2002)
Amber Tamblyn as Katie Embry in ‘The Ring’
Gore Verbinski did a terrific job adapting Japanese horror film Ringu for American audiences, but the opening sequence of The Ring sparked an equally legendary Scary Movie parody for a reason.
Two teenage girls, Katie (Amber Tamblyn) and Becca (Rachael Bella), are hanging out and discussing how watching too much TV kills your brain cells (how apt). They quickly move to the topic of an urban legend involving a cursed video tape that causes anyone who watches it to die one week later.
Unfortunately, Katie actually watched the video exactly one week earlier. When the girls receive a phone call, Becca tricks Katie into thinking it’s from the video demon when it’s actually Katie’s mom, which is a terrific bait-and-switch moment. But then the TV turns on by itself, a strange pool of water appears in the upstairs hall, and something comes out of the TV. Bye-bye, Katie.
But the second-scariest part of this opening scene comes shortly after the scene has already ended, when a split-second jump scare reveals what Katie looked like after Samara killed her. That iconic look was conceived by retired SFX legend Rick Baker.
08 of 10
28 Weeks Later (2007)
Robert Carlyle as Don in ’28 Weeks Later’
While the weakest of the 28 Days Later franchise,the second installment is nevertheless a solid entry. But the way it starts off is just a bit more thrilling and pulse-pounding than what follows.
28 Weeks Later opens on a remote cottage, where a small group of survivors have managed to remain quietly alive while the Rage Virus spreads outside. When a young boy appears at their doorstep begging for safety, Don (Robert Carlyle) is hesitant to open the door. However, his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) is more than willing to bring the boy inside.
Unfortunately, Don was right to be suspicious, because the boy unknowingly brought with him an Infected horde that was hot on his tail. They lay siege to the cottage, killing just about everyone except for Alice, Don, and the boy. Trapped by an Infected in an upstairs bedroom, Alice pleads with Don for help, but he shuts the door and runs off, leaving Alice and the boy for dead.
The scene isn’t just a powder keg of tension that leads to frenzied bedlam; its cynical depiction of human self-preservation is far more terrifying than any horror movie monster. Smartly directed, brutal, and unflinchingly tragic, it’s hard for the rest of the movie to live up to the first few minutes, especially since the characterization is far weaker than that of its predecessor.
09 of 10
It (2017)
Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in ‘It’
It manages to be both a solid adaptation of (the first half) of Stephen King’s horror novel and an improvement on the Tim Curry adaptation from 1990. But the sheer brutality and creeping terror of the simplistic opening scene makes the rest of the film — with its gratuitous set pieces and CGI gore — seem much more inelegant.
Young Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) plays outside in the rain with a paper sailboat that his brother, Bill (Jaeden Martell), made for him. Sailing the boat along the rainy streets, it eventually ends up falling into a storm drain. When Georgie bends down and peers into the drain, a pair of eyes stare back at him. It’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård), and he’ll give Georgie his boat back if he just reaches down and takes it.
Sadly, Pennywise is not a benevolent creature. Instead of handing Georgie his boat back, he chomps down on the child’s outstretched arm, fully removing the whole limb before dragging him into the sewer and his tragic fate.
It’s not often that movies, even horror flicks, are so willing to allow disturbing things to happen to children onscreen. The scene succeeds in both shock value and indulging in just how creepy it would be to see a literal clown peering out from the small crevice of a sewer drain.
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10 of 10
When a Stranger Calls (1979)
Carol Kane as Jill Johnson in ‘When a Stranger Calls’
Credit: Everett
When a Stranger Calls is the quintessential “opening scene that surpasses the rest of the movie” horror film— in fact, this is the one that inspired Scream’s own opening sequence.
When it hit theaters in 1979, critics and audiences were blown away by the first 23 minutes, which feature a babysitter played by Carol Kane receiving a series of increasingly disturbing phone calls. When the babysitter phones the police, they trace the caller to a line inside the house.
The sequence is so taut that it’s basically a 23-minute-long held breath, turning the safety of one’s home into a threat, a telephone into a weapon. But when that breath finally releases, so does the quality of the remaining film. What follows is ultimately a completely different movie, going from an intense slasher to a sluggish police procedural.
After the caller is caught following the opening sequence, the tension dissipates, and the film turns its focus to the private detective pursuing him after he escapes a mental institution. The rest of the film drags, the pacing falters, and the story inches toward a mediocre conclusion.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly