10 Best Horror Movie Opening Scenes Of The 2010s

2. It (2017)

Long before director Andy Muschietti and star Bill Skarsgard sank their fangs into the property, Stephen King’s It was iconic, and yet it wasn’t until the 2017 version that we really saw how terrifying Pennywise the clown (Skarsgard) could be.

It opens during a storm in the small town of Derry, where six-year-old Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) takes his paper sailboat and yellow plastic mac into the street to play. All is going well, as he squeals with delight and Benjamin Wallfisch’s score puts us in mind of a Disney adventure... until Georgie smashes his head off a wooden barrier and loses his boat down a storm drain. Enter, Pennywise. The clown chortles and giggles and tempts the boy to reach in for his toy, before chewing his arm clean off. The screaming, maimed Georgie attempts to crawl away, but the clown grabs his ankles, and he’s down the drain for good.

Hitting the ground running, Muschietti lets his monster out of the cage in this first scene, killing off an innocent, and turning expectations on their head. It’s a bold gambit to not just endanger or kill, but openly mutilate a child onscreen in the first scene, but from this, we keenly understand the savagery of the monster and the fact that, in this film, literally nobody is safe.