20 Horror Movie Openings That Are Practically Perfect

20. Suicide Club - The Mass Suicide

Even before Suicide Club acquired the cult classic status it enjoys today, viewers at the time would've immediately known they were in for one hell of an extreme, controversial, taboo-busting knockout of a movie. The opening scene alone was the strongest statement of intent imaginable. 

54 Japanese schoolgirls hold hands and cheerfully jump in front of a subway train with extremely gory results, leaving everyone around them traumatized and completely soaked in their blood. All the way through, jolly music plays dissonantly over the sordid spectacle, giving the entire thing an even nastier edge. 

It's harrowing and grotesque, yet you won't be able to look away either. It's mesmerizing in its execution and as a set-up to the movie that follows, it pretty much does everything it needs to do. 

It braces viewers for one of the most messed-up horror flicks of the 2000s and it establishes the movie's central mystery - what is driving a wave of inexplicable suicides across the country? - in the most brutal of ways.

It's an elite opening sequence, although it may (understandably!) be too much for the squeamish.