10 Horror Movies That Pissed Off Audiences Straight Away
5. Don Makes A Run For It - 28 Weeks Later
Unlike most of the examples on this list, this is a case of an opening sequence that pisses the audience off in a way that actually benefits the movie.
28 Weeks Later had the unenviable task of trying to match the visceral vision of Danny Boyle's original horror classic, and it swung laudably hard in its white-knuckle opening.
The film begins with protagonist Don (Robert Carlyle), his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack), and a few other survivors holed up in a remote cottage, but terror soon strikes when a young boy seeking shelter brings with him a horde of the Rage-infected not-zombies.
With the infected swarming the cottage, Don urges Alice to leave the boy to his own devices, but when she refuses, Don decides to flee, saving himself while seemingly leaving both his wife and the boy to be killed.
Though we later learn that Alice in fact survived the incident, it's an utterly gut-wrenching opening precisely because it forces us to condemn Don's behaviour while also considering the likelihood that we'd do the exact same thing - or at least an act of adjacent cowardice - in his shoes.
It pissed everyone off in the exact, perfect way that the filmmakers intended. You hated Don in that moment, but understood him as a human being.