Whether they feature brutal murders or zombie invasions,
these horror movie openings are bound to hook you in and haunt your dreams.
In 1977, "Eraserhead" marked the debut of the one and only master of the surreal, David Lynch. With
a resume as unconventional as his, it holds a lot of weight to say that his first feature-length
offering remains the most experimental of his entire filmography. This exercise in
bleakness follows Henry Spencer as he unexpectedly becomes the father of a seemingly inhuman baby.
The opening scene of "Eraserhead" immediately sets the film's oppressive tone and smothering
atmosphere. Much of the film takes place in a surreal, industrial landscape,
but the very first moment is set away from any identifiable setting. We see
a double exposure of Henry's frightened face as he glides from side to side in
front of something resembling an alien planet. Elsewhere, a disfigured man — credited as the
Man in the Planet — pulls levers as a bizarre organism slithers its way out of Henry's mouth.
At face value, this opening scene might not seem like it has anything to do with
the rest of the film. However, some fans believe that the opening scene is the
key to understanding the entire movie: the lever pulling represents sexual intercourse,
and the organism exiting Henry and entering the planet represents conception. Of course,
the nature of Lynch's abstract storytelling and his refusal to discuss his intentions
means that his movies are always open to numerous interpretations.
"Believe it or not, 'Eraserhead' is my most spiritual film."
"Mhm. Why, elaborate on that." "No, I won’t."
Starring a much more sinister than usual Elijah Wood, 2012's "Maniac" is a remake
of the 1980 horror film of the same name. Both films tell the story of a deranged
serial killer with a mannequin obsession and mommy issues, who stalks the streets
of New York City looking for women to scalp. What sets the remake apart is French director
Franck Khalfoun's decision to present the entire film from a first-person perspective.
The creative use of point of view in "Maniac" makes the violence much more disturbing than
it would be otherwise — and the film's opening scene capitalizes on its unique presentation
style. Through the eyes of the killer, the audience watches as he finds, stalks,
and closes in on his victim in painstaking detail. The level of realism is high, and Wood's heavy
breathing as he sneaks up behind his unsuspecting target makes the scene unbearably uncomfortable
even before the actual violence starts. When the time does finally come, the first-person
POV showcases the kill in full, graphic detail, not cutting away until it's finally over.
Rather than checking back in with Jim, Selena, and Hannah from the British zombie masterpiece
"28 Days Later," its sequel, "28 Weeks Later," wipes the storytelling slate clean and follows a
new set of characters in a rage-infected England. A narrative reset like that for a sequel puts a
lot of weight on the opening scene. Luckily, "28 Weeks Later" rose to the challenge with its intro,
even if the rest of the film comes up short when compared to the original in other areas.
In what is probably the peak of the film, the opening sequence introduces
a new group of survivors living out the zombie apocalypse in an isolated cottage. Audiences
begin to get to know them individually, but the infected bust in and tear them
apart before the end of the intro. With character development, world-building,
action, and gore, the opening sequence of "28 Weeks Later" feels like a strong zombie
short film all on its own. The hard-hitting soundtrack also adds a lot to the scene,
especially as lone survivor Don sprints across a field with zombies hot on his tail.
The sequence works great in isolation, but it also sets the rest of the film's plot in motion.
Don's decision to choose self preservation and abandon his wife instead of trying to save her
leads to a reunion with his children in the now-militarized London. His shocking split
second decision even comes back to bite him when it turns out that his wife didn't die after all.
"You said you saw her die!" "I didn't say that."
"Yes you did, you said you saw her die, you did."
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 1997 J-horror hit "Cure" stars Kôji Yakusho as a detective
investigating a string of bizarre and seemingly random murders. Even though
they all seem to be carried out by different killers, the victims all have gory Xs carved
into their bodies. Before our detective protagonist is even introduced, though,
"Cure" gets started by showing one of the murders as it unfolds.
The opening scene follows an unidentified man as he rips a pipe off a wall in a transit tunnel,
meets up with a woman in a hotel room, then beats her to death wordlessly and without motive. The
way the scene is shot makes the violence hard to watch — there's no fancy camera movements or
flourishes, just a man taking an innocent woman's life. What makes the scene even more disturbing,
however, is that after the man kills her, he snaps out of a trance with no memory of what he just
did. It's all set to some surprisingly cheerful music that makes the whole thing much more
creepy. Be sure to check out "Cure" if you enjoy suspenseful mysteries with terrifying tension.
David Cronenberg, the man behind movies like "Videodrome" and "The Fly," has
a well-earned reputation as the king of body horror. His son, Brandon Cronenberg,
has proven that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The younger Cronenberg followed in
his father's footsteps by making his own creative and gory horror films,
starting with "Antiviral" in 2012 and following it up eight years later with "Possessor."
It's important to note that "Possessor" exists in two drastically different
forms — a heavily censored version, and the completely uncensored "Possessor:
Uncut," which received its own full release. The censored version scales back drastically
on the film's sexuality along with its violence and gore, which has a
major impact on the overall effectiveness of the film. That extends to the opening scene.
"Possessor: Uncut" begins with a cold open scene that depicts an assassination. Rather
than a typical movie assassination that might be conducted with a sniper rifle,
this kill is over-the-top violent, featuring excessive stabbing followed by a graphic
suicide-by-cop ending for the assassin. But there's a twist: after the assassin dies,
she's revealed to have been an innocent person who was possessed by the true assassin via sci-fi
technology. The scene is gratuitously violent on a literal level, but becomes increasingly
terrifying as the thought-provoking questions the film raises regarding free will sink in.
"Cat People" started out as a subtle and restrained horror film made within the
restrictions of the 1940s Hollywood studio system. When Paul Schrader decided to remake the film in
1982, the story was no longer constrained by the Hays Code of days past. Schrader and
screenwriter Alan Ormsby took the original premise of a woman who fears that sexual
interaction will turn her into a giant cat and ratcheted everything up several notches.
From the very first scene of the movie, it's made clear that the '80s version of "Cat People" is a
world apart from the original — and that it's going to hold nothing back. The film begins
in an otherworldly desert locale as the wind unearths fields of skulls buried beneath the
surface. A young woman is bound to a tree as a sacrifice to a panther — but instead of the
panther mauling or eating her, it's implied that it actually impregnates her with a half-human,
half-panther child. Ritualistic bestiality and cross-species offspring are rather taboo subjects
that most horror films wouldn't dare touch upon, but Schrader's "Cat People" is a unique animal.
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a classic sci-fi horror film from 1956,
based on Jack Finney's novel "The Body Snatchers." The 1978 remake was able to
push the horror elements much further because of advancements in special effects, along with the
fact that the Hollywood Production Code had been repealed in the intervening years. Just like the
previous incarnation, Philip Kaufman's version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" tells the
story of alien copies secretly taking the place of real human beings. The remake swaps the small-town
locale of the original for an urban San Francisco setting, injects a strong dose of body horror via
the alien transformations, and delves into greater detail regarding the aliens' arrival on Earth.
Rather than starting out in any sort of humanoid form, the alien entity first
appears as a difficult-to-describe biological material somewhere between seed, water,
and smoke. The opening scene tracks the journey of this alien substance from its planet of origin
all the way down into Earth's atmosphere, where it becomes lost in the rain. There's something truly
terrifying about just how easy it is for the alien substance to reach the planet and spread
throughout the population without anyone noticing. The knowledge that it may already be too late
by the time the human characters notice makes the alien's arrival chilling from the get-go.
"You're evolving into a new life form. Come and watch."
Tobe Hooper's 1974 horror masterpiece "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" kicked off a long-lasting
legacy of sequels, remakes, prequels, and reboots, but none of the subsequent movies
have ever held a candle to the original. Though sometimes unfairly written off as
trashy and exploitative, it's often hailed as one of the best and one of the scariest
horror films ever made — and those scares kick off right away with the film's opening scene.
Given that the film was made on an extremely low budget,
it makes sense that "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" opens with a sequence that is simple,
yet incredibly effective. The documentary-style narration provided by John Larroquette sets the
stage for the violence and lends a sense of authenticity to the events that follow,
compounded by the grungy realism of Hooper's visual aesthetic. The first shots of the
film are glimpses of corpses in the flashes of a camera accompanied by some of the creepiest sound
effects ever put into a horror film. The final visual of the opening scene is a grave-robbed
amalgamation of corpses assembled together and impaled on the top of a pointy gravestone,
sending chills through viewers before a single living character has even graced the screen.
Writer and director Ari Aster followed up his excellent debut feature film "Hereditary" with
another strong horror outing in the form of 2019's "Midsommar." The story mostly revolves around a
group of naïve Americans who head to an isolated Swedish village for a festival that only happens
once every 90 years. Of course, the whole thing turns out to be much darker than they expected,
and a terrible fate befalls them all. But before the festivities get underway,
the film starts out much closer to home for protagonist Dani.
The beginning of "Midsommar" might just be the most disturbing and heartbreaking sequence in
the entire film. While Dani is away from home, her depressed sister kills herself via car exhaust,
which also leads to both of her parents dying by asphyxiation. This intro sequence isn't
really a traditional horror movie scare, but more like a real-life one — and the
emotional trauma it unleashes on Dani is terrifying on the deepest possible level.
"No, no, no, noooooo…"
With the opening scene being such a gut punch, it's hard for the rest of
"Midsommar" to live up to it. Even as elders jump off cliffs and people are burned alive,
many viewers will still be left believing that the movie peaked with its opening scene.
Alexandre Aja would eventually become known as the director of mainstream horror remakes and sequels
like "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Piranha 3D," but his second directorial effort, "High Tension,"
was one of the defining films of the New French Extremity movement. The basic plot is just about
as straightforward as you can get in the horror genre: a nameless killer with a razor bursts into
a cottage to slaughter the family inside, and a tense, blood-soaked cat-and-mouse game follows.
What makes the bare-bones narrative work for the majority of the runtime is Aja's slick,
grounded direction — and his unflinching portrayal of extreme
violence. The kills in "High Tension" are all ratcheted up intensely enough
to feel fresh and shocking within a genre prone to desensitizing fans.
The film's opening scene sets the tone and lets you know that "High Tension" aims to
shock and disgust. By the seven-minute mark, the necrophiliac killer is shown violating
a woman's severed head, setting the bar for the level of depravity that the rest of the
film will indulge in. The film's nonsensical twist ending throws the opening scene and much
of the plot into question, but that doesn't change the impact it has upon first watch.
The legendary George Romero followed up his genre-defining 1968 zombie film "Night of the
Living Dead" with the equally revolutionary "Dawn of the Dead" exactly one decade later. In 2004,
"Dawn of the Dead" was remade by Zack Snyder as his feature film debut,
having made a name for himself as a director of music videos. While Romero's original version
is the vastly superior film overall, Snyder's remake does boast one hell of an opening sequence.
After what very well may be the last normal day of her life, Ana wakes up to see her husband attacked
by a zombified child. After she fights her way out of the house, the film then widens its scope
to briefly showcase the start of the zombie apocalypse — and things aren't looking good.
Giving a perspective on the very start of the zombie takeover is an element that is
unique to Snyder's remake, while the rest of the film utilizes the same shopping mall
setting as Romero's original. The "Dawn of the Dead" remake never manages to quite live
up to the high bar set by its terrifying opening sequence, but it remains an entertaining zombie
flick that stands out well enough from the sea of zombie movies that came out in the 2000s.
After being nominated for the Best Director Oscar for his 2001 film "Mulholland Drive,"
David Lynch took a five-year break from feature filmmaking while working on shorts
and music videos. When he returned to the silver screen, Lynch went back to his roots
with "Inland Empire" to deliver his most bizarre and fully experimental work since "Eraserhead."
"Inland Empire" is three hours long, cryptic, shot on ugly, low-resolution digital video, and,
most importantly, absolutely terrifying. Lynch holds nothing back, opening the film with a purely
experimental sequence that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the film on face
value. The simple visual of a needle scratching along a record feels intense and threatening
the way Lynch presents it, with off-kilter extreme close-ups, heightened sound design, and
superimposed images of what might be the inside of a human body — or something else entirely.
The opening scene progresses directly from the image of a hypnotic needle to a hotel where a
man and woman converse with unsubtitled dialogue in an unidentified language. Their actions aren't
all that out of the ordinary, but their faces are blurred beyond recognition in a rather unsettling,
Lynchian way. The intro is strange and frightening in equal measure,
which perfectly sets the tone and atmosphere of the film that follows.
"It's a story that happened yesterday… but I know it's tomorrow."
"That doesn't make sense!"
"Begotten" is a divisive underground horror film from 1989, directed by E.
Elias Merhige. Merhige would go on to make a few more conventional movies later on in his career,
including the excellent horror comedy "Shadow of the Vampire," — but "Begotten" is on the
extreme end of the experimental spectrum. Though its avant-garde stylings have proven divisive,
its presentation is undeniably unsettling.
The opening scene of "Begotten" has the power to serve as instant nightmare fuel for even the
most hardcore horror fans. Grainy, high-contrast black-and-white footage shows a grotesque version
of God committing suicide by repeatedly slashing at their stomach with a straight razor. The highly
stylized visuals make it a bit difficult for the viewer to tell exactly what they are looking at,
but that somehow only makes the whole thing even freakier. The minimalist sound design adds to the
disturbing nature of the scene — there's no music, just natural ambiance and the quiet
sounds of the body's rocking movements. This is an opening scene that serves as a litmus test
for the rest of the film — audiences will either be enthralled by its grotesque and
experimental nature, or want to jump ship immediately. We can't blame them either way.