10 Horror Movies That Should've Scrapped Their Opening Scene
These horror movies would've been better off without their first scene.
The opening scene is so incredibly important in any movie, but perhaps never more so than in a horror film, where it needs to set the right mood and let the audience know precisely what they're in for.
Kick things off in boring fashion and filmmakers can immediately lose the crowd, but begin with a thrilling, terrifying, or shocking opening and you've probably got them for the rest of the runtime.
It's tough to deliver an opening scene that's fun, exciting, scary, and memorable all at once, and so it's little surprise that many horror flicks struggle right out of the gate for one reason or another.
And that's certainly the case with these 10 movies, each of which would've been better off by just... ditching their opening scenes entirely, or in the very least giving them a major rethink during production.
From prologue sequences which pointlessly spoiled the rest of the movie to those which simply got them started on a bum note, these openings did these movies no favours at all.
Thankfully some of these horror films were good enough to succeed regardless, but none of them needed this upfront handicap...
10. 28 Days Later
28 Days Later's opening sequence may be unforgettable, but that doesn't mean we needed to see it.
The post-apocalyptic horror film begins with a visceral scene which reveals how the Rage virus spread throughout the UK, as a group of animal rights activists break into a lab and "liberate" an infected chimp.
But of course, said chimp attacks one of the activists, causing the virus to infect the group, in turn leading to a fast-spreading epidemic which brings the country to its knees.
Yet does this information really add anything to the central story? Isn't it more unsettling if we just open on Jim (Cillian Murphy) waking up in hospital 28 days after the outbreak began, with neither he nor the audience aware of how it all happened?
28 Days Later is a great movie regardless of how it begins, but given that the how of the virus' spread ultimately isn't very important in the grand scope of the narrative, it almost feels like a redundant inclusion - perhaps even studio-mandated.