10 Horror Movie Openings That Surprised Us All
9. The Empty Man
Finally released towards the end of last year - being one of many films whose release was delayed due to the pandemic - David Prior's The Empty Man nicely surprises audiences early on by serving up what essentially is a teaser movie for what was to come.
Set in 1995, that opening focusses on four friends whose hiking trip goes majorly array. There's an eerie skeleton, there's catatonia running wild, there's eerie figures, there's sinister goings-on, and there's the death of three of these characters.
From there, just as you're digging into this story, The Empty Man surprisingly changes things up by jumping ahead to 2018.
In this new setting, a mystery plays out involving rituals that all tie to the local legend of the Empty Man. This strange entity forces its victims to kill themselves, before then leaving a message of how "The Empty Man made me do it".
Given the relatively recent release of the picture, it would be a tad unfair to fully wade into spoiler territory here. Either way, the setup of The Empty Man is one that definitely takes the film's audience by surprise in how it basically serves up a bonus mini-movie.