10 Horror Movies That Cleverly START With Huge Twists

2009's Friday the 13th "remake" is arguably a teensy bit underappreciated, and in the very least it quite sensibly avoids being a beat-for-beat remake of the 1980 original, instead serving up a reimagining which incorporates plot elements from the first four movies.

The film's big early twist, however, occurs when we're introduced to what is apparently the movie's central collective of doomed youngsters as they arrive for a camping trip at Crystal Lake.

Except, as it turns out, four of the five "main" characters are actually killed off by Jason Voorhees (Derek Mears) in the movie's opening 20 minutes.

At this point, the film leaps forward six weeks and focuses on an entirely new set of characters, including Clay (Jared Padalecki), who visits Crystal Lake in search of his sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti) - the only character from the prologue who wasn't killed by Jason.

It's certainly a clever subversion of expectations for a remake/reboot/whatever that could've just lazily played the hits as a listless retelling of the original.

Instead, it at least tried to do something different with the form and function of the series' storytelling.