10 Best Horror Movie Opening Scenes Of The 2010s

3. Evil Dead (2013)

Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead rebooted Sam Raimi’s franchise with a fresh cast of characters and a reverence for the source material that carried it far beyond comparable cabin-in-the-woods flicks. Fans still stuck in the wacky, plastic comedy world that Raimi had fashioned his franchise into weren’t ready for a slice of horror this ghastly at the time, but recent reappraisals have it up there with the best of them.

Evil Dead opens on a young, bedraggled woman limping through a dark forest, before being set upon, caught, and knocked out by a pair of hillbilly poachers. When she comes around, she is lashed to a post and surrounded by instruments of torture, dead animals, and a cultish crowd that includes her own father. He pours gasoline over her head and fails to strike matches while she begs him to see sense, but when the match finally lights, the woman shows her true nature, eyes turning yellow, voice demonic, promising pain and misery while she burns. A shotgun blast takes her head off, and the title card lands.

As cold opens go, this is up there with the best. Alvarez tugs us in one direction, has us backing the wrong side, and then flips the script at the last moment, turning an abusive religious sacrifice into a valiant, heartbreaking attempt to do what is right and contain unspeakable evil.

Masterful.