10 Best Horror Movie Opening Scenes Of The 2010s

Despite it being a whole 13 years since it hit our screens, Richard Bates Jr.’s Excision still exists on the fringes of the horror canon, known to cult fans and festival attendees, but lacking the exposure to penetrate the mainstream. Nevertheless, it is very much part of the advance guard of the so-called elevated horror movement, rolling next-level body horror, psychological weirdness, arthouse segments, and a scathing lead performance from AnnaLynne McCord into a tidy 80-minute package.

The film sets us on edge from the off, forgoing the opportunity to segue gently into the world of unstable high schooler Pauline (McCord) and smashing from the title card into an abstract scene of Pauline facing a bloodied, tortured version of herself against a blue grid background. While the suffering Pauline chokes on blood and seizes, ordinary Pauline watches in throes of ecstasy, squirming and climaxing. And then she wakes up.

Of course, it’s a dream, but it instils in us a deep suspicion of the main character’s motives and psychology, and sets the stage for all the weirdness to come (amateur operations, violent autoeroticism, the departure of sanity). The scene is thematic and aesthetic, and exactly the kind of thing Nicolas Winding Refn would bring us a few years later in The Neon Demon - but Excision did it first.