There are few things more satisfying than a movie wasting no time in grabbing audiences by the horns, and this is especially true in the realm of horror; you can’t help but respect a film that not only wants to give you a fair share of screams and cold sweats, but also lets you know that it means business right out of the gate.
Today, r/horror is celebrating the best of the genre’s openers, the most iconic first five minutes, the outsets that tingled the most spines, and the most cutthroat of the kickoffs that horror’s long catalogue has ever witnessed.
There were plenty of nodding heads when one responder suggested The Ring‘s terrifying preface; some recalled a near-traumatic night during a theatrical screening, others stuttered on the keyboard at the thought of the closet.
Another user drummed up a sizable amount of support for the 1998 comic book film Blade, starring Marvel’s esteemed vampire hunter of the same name.
Others reminded us that sometimes, you just need the right amount of daftness in your dialogue to make people remember the opening shots of your film, as the 2013 Evil Dead reboot proved.
But we could never talk about horror movie openings without bringing up 1996’s Scream, whose deft handling of meta subversions continue to leave their impact on the genre today.
You should never leave your audiences hanging for too long, and thankfully for horror fans, it looks like that’s a rule that their beloved genre is all too happy to follow.
