10 Horror Movies That Never Got Better Than Their Opening Moments
3. Midsommar
After Ari Aster's brilliant-yet-traumatising debut Hereditary, audiences should've been firmly primed to expect a true horrorshow opening to his follow-up Midsommar, and that's absolutely what he delivered.
The movie begins with a stomach-knottingly uneasy 12-minute sequence in which protagonist Dani (Florence Pugh) attempts to contact her parents after receiving a disturbing e-mail from her troubled sister Terri (Klaudia Csányi).
An increasingly anxious Dani calls her boyfriend Christian (Jack Raynor) for support, though he remains adamant that Terri will be fine.
Yet moments later, Dani calls Christian back wailing in agony, as it's revealed that Terri has committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning, and also taken her and Dani's parents with her.
From the sight of Terri's grey, dead-eyed face with a tube duct-taped to her mouth, to Dani's gut-wrenching cries of anguish, it's a haunting, dread-soaked sequence that feels so discomfortingly intimate and raw, like we're intruding on something we're not supposed to see.
The rest of Midsommar is one wild, horrific rollercoaster, that's for sure, and while its third act ultimately ended up dividing casual audiences and horror aficionados alike, most will surely agree that it peaks with its mini-masterpiece of an opening.