10 Best Opening Movie Scenes Of All Time (According To Reddit)

2. Scream (1996)

Scream Casey Becker Drew Barrymore
Dimension Films

The Scream franchise is famous for its shocking twists and turns, and the opening of the 1996 original might be its best one.

With actress Drew Barrymore being a major star at the time, it was expected that she'd have a substantial role in the film, especially considering that she was all over the marketing. So when she was brutally murdered in the opening few minutes? Well, that was director Wes Craven tearing up the rulebook, throwing it on the ground, and stamping on it, right in front of our faces.

Even without the element of Barrymore's fame, it's just a tense and well-paced scene, with the slow realization that Casey is caught in a trap making the entire sequence drip with dread. Add some incredible voicework by Roger L. Jackson as the voice of Ghostface, a few bursts of shocking violence, and that agonizing moment where Casey comes so close to reaching her parents, and this is horror filmmaking at its absolute best.

The scene is so effective that it traumatized several Redditors who have kids of their own, and it's not hard to see why.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!