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10 Horror Movie Opening Scenes So Good We Were Instantly Hooked

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Some horror movies opt to lull viewers into a sense of comfort or complacency before ripping the rug out from under them; films like Alien, Rosemary’s Baby, or Psycho take a while to introduce the world and its characters before unleashing the horror. Other horror movies prefer to go straight for the jugular right out of the gate, delivering an attention-grabbing scene before unwinding the narrative.

That opening scare not only serves as a memorable introduction but it establishes the film’s overall tone as well. It’s long since become a staple in horror. Whether the rest of the film holds up to the opener is an entirely different story, though. For those memorable, attention-grabbing opening scenes that elicit jolts, chills, and thrills, here are 10 of horror’s best.


When a Stranger Calls Back

1979’s When a Stranger Calls has a fantastic opening spun from the urban legend about the babysitter and the caller within the house. The rest of the film? Not so great. But this made-for-cable television sequel is surprisingly much better and the opening scene is an all-timer. This time the babysitter, Julia, is played by Jill Schoelen (The Stepfather, Popcorn). While Julia is on duty at her regular gig, the kids are fast asleep upstairs when a stranger knocks on the front door. He pleads to use the phone to call in help for his broken down car. Julia refuses to open the door to let him in (she’s smart), but offers to make the call for him. Except, she finds the phone is dead. It’s the beginning of a very intense cat and mouse game, especially when Julia notices stuff within the house has been moved around.


Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

How do you follow up one of horror’s most vital classics, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? If you’re Tobe Hooper you approach the sequel with pitch-black humor, and you announce it to your audience with a great opening hook. Set 13 years after the first film, the opening sequence not only introduces us to final girl Stretch (Caroline Williams), but reacquaints us with Leatherface in an unexpected way; a crazy car chase. Leatherface dances in the back of the pickup before gleefully dispatching his victims. It’s a scene that screams this is going to be nothing like predecessor in the most entertaining fashion.


The Conjuring

James Wan’s film featured an opening so strong that it earned its own spinoff series. It’s easy to see why, too. Not only does it effectively introduce the Warrens and their paranormal submersed world, but the self-contained story of Annabelle plays out like a perfectly conducted symphony of scares. The dread building, music, timing, and camera angles all work in tandem to escalate Annabelle from throwaway creepy doll to menacing demonic presence in mere minutes. It’s a great bookend to the Perrons’ haunting, and the true birthplace of the Conjuring universe.


It

Whether we’re talking the 1990 TV miniseries or the 2017 adaptation, take your pick; they both open the same way. After Bill makes his younger brother a paper boat while sick in bed, little Georgie takes it out into the rain for a test drive. When the rain carries the boat down into a storm drain, he finds Pennywise the Dancing Clown offering to retrieve it for him. The TV version isn’t nearly as bloody, but both have a terrifying pointy-toothed Pennywise and the demise of little Georgie. So, team Tim Curry or team Bill Skarsgard? Either way, we come out a winner with this fantastic opener. 


Ghost Ship

It’s difficult to imagine anything that followed this scene could have lived up to the high bar that was set. Opening on a luxury cruise ship in 1962, wealthy passengers enjoy an elegant dance on the deck with music by an Italian lounge singer. Everyone is enjoying their evening, and there’s even a cute moment where a young girl accepts an offer to dance by the ship’s captain. This is the precise moment where an unseen person presses a lever that releases a wire trap. One moment everyone’s dancing and happy. The next they’re bisected with their guts spilling out. Gloriously gory and shocking, it remains an all-time best opening scene. 


Suspiria

Dario Argento unleashes an onslaught of sensory overload in the opening minutes of beloved classic Suspiria. Unsuspecting Suzy Bannion arrives at the German dance academy late on a stormy night, while frightened student Pat flees. Both Pat and the audience know someone, or something, is after her. We just don’t know what. The vivid color scheming against Goblin’s frenzied score builds along with the tension, a supernatural mystery grabbing hold of the viewer and refusing to let go. Even after the opening scene ends with the brutal hanging of Pat. 


Dawn of the Dead (2004)

By 2004, the zombie apocalypse had become a bit formulaic and stale. We’d long been accustomed to the fall of civilization by way of zombie outbreak since George A. Romero broke the mold in 1968. This remake gets all that stuff out of the way in the opening scene, beginning with a subtle bite victim in a hospital to waking up the next morning with the world in flames. It’s fast and unrelenting. Also fast and unrelenting? The zombies. From the vicious death of Ana’s husband to his near-instant turn, Dawn of the Dead ushered in a faster, meaner brand of zombie.


Scream

So much can be said about Wes Craven’s film and its game-changing effect on horror, but we’re specifically talking opening scenes here. It doesn’t get much better than this one, either. An intense 13-minute standoff between teen Casey Becker and Ghostface killer is a master class in horror on its own merit. Clever writing, effective suspense, and quotable dialogue that pervaded pop culture since, it all culminated in one of horror’s most shocking deaths of all time. No one ever suspected that the character belonging to the film’s biggest star, Drew Barrymore, would die in the opening scene, let alone that she would be viciously disemboweled with her parents just seconds away. 


Halloween

A continuous tracking shot that places the viewer in Michael Myers’ point of view as he walks through the Myers house, puts on a clown mask, get a knife, and then murders his post-coital older sister on Halloween night. It’s chilling in both its atmospheric dread and that it’s clear that this murderer is an emotionless killing machine. The opening scene ends with a shocking twist; the killer is just a child. Brilliantly shot and choreographed, John Carpenter sets the tone right out of the gate and establishes that this killer is someone to fear long before he set his sights on Laurie Strode. He really is the Boogeyman.


Jaws

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the film credited as the first ever blockbuster has a killer opening. By now it’s well documented that the mechanical shark “Bruce” malfunctioned to the point where director Steven Spielberg had to get creative. It worked in the film’s favor with Spielberg crafting sequences and shots that forces the audience to rely on their imagination, rendering a far more terrifying film with a mostly unseen apex predator lurking beneath the water’s surface. The opening scene exemplifies this, when a young woman sneaks away from a beach party to skinny dip. The underwater POV of the shark looking up at its prey treading water is powerful; the audience knows the woman is in danger long before she does. Even when the shark clamps down on the woman, we only see her body being thrashed about as she gurgles and screams for help. Alone and far from shore, no one hears her violent end. It’s pure horror.

Horror journalist, RT Top Critic, and Critics Choice Association member. Co-Host of the Bloody Disgusting Podcast. Has appeared on PBS series' Monstrum, served on the SXSW Midnighter shorts jury, and moderated horror panels for WonderCon and SeriesFest.

Editorials

‘Leprechaun Returns’ – The Charm of the Franchise’s Legacy Sequel

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leprechaun returns

The erratic Leprechaun franchise is not known for sticking with a single concept for too long. The namesake (originally played by Warwick Davis) has gone to L.A., Las Vegas, space, and the ‘hood (not once but twice). And after an eleven-year holiday since the Davis era ended, the character received a drastic makeover in a now-unmentionable reboot. The critical failure of said film would have implied it was time to pack away the green top hat and shillelagh, and say goodbye to the nefarious imp. Instead, the Leprechaun series tried its luck again.

The general consensus for the Leprechaun films was never positive, and the darker yet blander Leprechaun: Origins certainly did not sway opinions. Just because the 2014 installment took itself seriously did not mean viewers would. After all, creator Mark Jones conceived a gruesome horror-comedy back in the early nineties, and that format is what was expected of any future ventures. So as horror legacy sequels (“legacyquels”) became more common in the 2010s, Leprechaun Returns followed suit while also going back to what made the ‘93 film work. This eighth entry echoed Halloween (2018) by ignoring all the previous sequels as well as being a direct continuation of the original. Even ardent fans can surely understand the decision to wipe the slate clean, so to speak.

Leprechaun Returns “continued the [franchise’s] trend of not being consistent by deciding to be consistent.” The retconning of Steven Kostanski and Suzanne Keilly’s film was met with little to no pushback from the fandom, who had already become accustomed to seeing something new and different with every chapter. Only now the “new and different” was familiar. With the severe route of Origins a mere speck in the rearview mirror, director Kotanski implemented a “back to basics” approach that garnered better reception than Zach Lipovsky’s own undertaking. The one-two punch of preposterous humor and grisly horror was in full force again.

LEPRECHAUN

Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

With Warwick Davis sitting this film out — his own choice — there was the foremost challenge of finding his replacement. Returns found Davis’ successor in Linden Porco, who admirably filled those blood-stained, buckled shoes. And what would a legacy sequel be without a returning character? Jennifer Aniston obviously did not reprise her final girl role of Tory Redding. So, the film did the next best thing and fetched another of Lubdan’s past victims: Ozzie, the likable oaf played by Mark Holton. Returns also created an extension of Tory’s character by giving her a teenage daughter, Lila (Taylor Spreitler).

It has been twenty-five years since the events of the ‘93 film. The incident is unknown to all but its survivors. Interested in her late mother’s history there in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, Lila transferred to the local university and pledged a sorority — really the only one on campus — whose few members now reside in Tory Redding’s old home. The farmhouse-turned-sorority-house is still a work in progress; Lila’s fellow Alpha Epsilon sisters were in the midst of renovating the place when a ghost of the past found its way into the present.

The Psycho Goreman and The Void director’s penchant for visceral special effects is noted early on as the Leprechaun tears not only into the modern age, but also through poor Ozzie’s abdomen. The portal from 1993 to 2018 is soaked with blood and guts as the Leprechaun forces his way into the story. Davis’ iconic depiction of the wee antagonist is missed, however, Linden Porco is not simply keeping the seat warm in case his predecessor ever resumes the part. His enthusiastic performance is accentuated by a rotten-looking mug that adds to his innate menace.

LEPRECHAUN RETURNS sequel

Pictured: Taylor Spreitler, Pepi Sonuga, and Sai Bennett as Lila, Katie and Rose in Leprechaun Returns.

The obligatory fodder is mostly young this time around. Apart from one luckless postman and Ozzie — the premature passing of the latter character removed the chance of caring about anyone in the film — the Leprechaun’s potential prey are all college aged. Lila is this story’s token trauma kid with caregiver baggage; her mother thought “monsters were always trying to get her.” Lila’s habit of mentioning Tory’s mental health problem does not make a good first impression with the resident mean girl and apparent alcoholic of the sorority, Meredith (Emily Reid). Then there are the nicer but no less cursorily written of the Alpha Epsilon gals: eco-conscious and ex-obsessive Katie (Pepi Sonuga), and uptight overachiever Rose (Sai Bennett). Rounding out the main cast are a pair of destined-to-die bros (Oliver Llewellyn Jenkins, Ben McGregor). Lila and her peers range from disposable to plain irritating, so rooting for any one of them is next to impossible. Even so, their overstated personalities make their inevitable fates more satisfying.

Where Returns excels is its death sequences. Unlike Jones’ film, this one is not afraid of killing off members of the main cast. Lila, admittedly, wears too much plot armor, yet with her mother’s spirit looming over her and the whole story — comedian Heather McDonald put her bang-on Aniston impersonation to good use as well as provided a surprisingly emotional moment in the film — her immunity can be overlooked. Still, the other characters’ brutal demises make up for Lila’s imperviousness. The Leprechaun’s killer set-pieces also happen to demonstrate the time period, seeing as he uses solar panels and a drone in several supporting characters’ executions. A premortem selfie and the antagonist’s snarky mention of global warming additionally add to this film’s particular timestamp.

Critics were quick to say Leprechaun Returns did not break new ground. Sure, there is no one jetting off to space, or the wacky notion of Lubdan becoming a record producer. This reset, however, is still quite charming and entertaining despite its lack of risk-taking. And with yet another reboot in the works, who knows where the most wicked Leprechaun ever to exist will end up next.


Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.

The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.

Leprechaun Returns movie

Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

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