10 Horror Movies That Lose You In The First 60 Seconds
Those horror openings that immediately soured you on a film.
The horror genre is one that so often sets its stall out from the get-go as it looks to grab the audience by the seat of their pants. Think of Halloween's startling revelation that its killer is a cherubic six-year-old; think the shocking, brutal demise of Drew Barrymore's Casey Becker in Scream; and think the traumatic wails of pain from poor Chrissie Watkins in Jaws.
Those three examples immediately made you sit up and pay attention to the tale that was to come, and, fortunately, all three of those openings were the start of something truly special where it pertains to their respective films.
On the flipside of this, though, there are those horror efforts whose first minute or two have the unwanted result of turning their audience off. There's nothing worse than heading to the cinema or putting a horror picture on your TV, all excited or that right sort of nervous at what great terrors you're about to watch, just to find the film's first few moments completely souring you on what you'd previously been so amped for - and it's such ropey openings that the focus is on here.
With that in mind, then, here are ten movies that managed to turn their audience off within their first minute(ish).
10. Alien 3
Starting with the biggest movie on this list - one that took home nearly $160 million at the box office upon its 1992 release - Alien 3 had audiences gnawing at their fists thanks to its first few minutes.
For all the promise of Aliens' closing moments, where we were told that the survivors of that film were heading to Earth, that all turned out to be utter bullsh*t. And not just did the ending of Aliens put Ripley, Hicks, Newt and Bishop on a course for Earth, but the early trailers for Alien 3 outright stated - via voiceover - that the action of this threequel was to take place on mankind's home planet.
That Alien 3 didn't feature Earth whatsoever is a major bone of contention amongst franchise fans to this day, but that third feature's opening minutes are even more frustrating. With audiences emotionally attached to Hicks and Newt, Alien 3 did the unthinkable and killed them off - offscreen, no less! - in its first sequence.
Explaining how the escape pod of Aliens crash-landed at the Fury 161 foundry, Hicks and Newt were lazily killed in said crash. Android Bishop just about survived that accident, and Ripley obviously made it through the crash in order to lead the narrative of Alien 3, but offing those other two hugely popular characters is arguably the biggest misdemaour made by Alien 3.