10 More Scariest Horror Movie Opening Credits

Hideo Nakata took the world by surprise in the late-‘90s with the era-defining Ringu (リング), popularising J-horror for a global audience and spawning an urban legend about a videotape that, after viewing, gives you just seven days to live. This captivated audiences’ imaginations so profoundly that adaptations of it are still being made today.

The cornerstone for all of this, of course, is the original movie's opening credits, which established an atmosphere and tone from which to construct a dynasty. Kenji Kawai's score (which Hans Zimmer echoed in the US remake) opens on a black screen with music that is neither discernibly acoustic nor electronic, and which, as the credits progress into simple titles over black flowing water, is accompanied by a subtle soundscape of elemental and guttural effects, as if the wind and water are themselves servants of the film's monster, Sadako (Rie Inō).

The water fills the entire screen and buries the perspective, disorienting us by leaving no point of focus, no horizon line, no sense of angle, and constantly shunting the eye right-to-left. Capped by a final transition into the movie proper, the river and titles dissolve into the static of a cathode ray screen, hitting the film's two major points of horror in one short sequence - the water of the hidden well, and the curse of the videotape. It's cold, it's abstract, and it chills you to the bone.