10 Horror Movies That Cleverly START With Huge Twists
7. Martyrs
Martyrs packs more wildness into its first 15 minutes than most horror movies do their entire runtime.
The opening scene takes place in 1971 and shows young Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) escaping from a slaughterhouse where she had been imprisoned, before she's placed in an orphanage and makes friends with a fellow resident, Anna (Morjana Alaoui).
The narrative then leaps forward an entire 15 years, where a seemingly normal family, the Belfonds, are having breakfast on the most regular morning you've ever seen in your life.
Except, after a few minutes of the family joking around over food, there's a knock at the door, and when the husband answers it, he's promptly blown away by a shotgun blast administered by a now-adult Lucie.
Lucie enters the house and quickly mows down the rest of the family - including their two teenage children - in what's one of the most powerfully disturbing openings to any horror movie, well, ever.
It's an epic "holy s**t!" moment coming totally out of nowhere in the middle of an otherwise completely banal establishing scene, and immediately leaves the audience desperate to know why Lucie did what she did.