20 Horror Movie Openings That Are Practically Perfect

18. Night Of The Living Dead - The Graveyard Attack

Coming up next is one of the most iconic horror movie openings of all time, in which a zombie attacks siblings Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbara (Judith O'Dea) in a graveyard, killing Johnny in the process. Night of the Living Dead might be nearly 60 years old, and it's been paid homage to many times, but here's the thing: it absolutely holds up. 

It's very much of its time, and yet that actually helps it to hit even harder, for the simple black-and-white camerawork and the documentarian feel of this sequence are remarkably effective. There are no jump scares and no gore, with the sequence instead being executed with an intelligent layer of verisimilitude that makes the whole thing far more believable, and therefore far scarier.

Another great detail is the way it starts out on a comedic note, with Johnny winding his sister up about ghouls coming to get her... right before an actual ghoul comes for them both. The mood then goes from gentle comedy to pure nightmare fuel in mere seconds, and the latter is very much the mood for the rest of this absolute classic of the genre.