10 Movies That Cleverly START With Huge Twists

3. Scream

Scream Casey Becker Drew Barrymore
Dimension Films

While Drew Barrymore's movie stardom has faded in recent years, she was a much hotter property back in the late '90s, with roles in Batman Forever, Wayne's World 2, and E.T. already under her belt.

And so, when she showed up in 1996 slasher-horror Scream, it was widely assumed that she'd have a massive role to play. Hell, at one stage, she was actually attached to play lead character Sidney Prescott, a role that eventually went to Neve Campbell.

But director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson knew that audiences were expecting Barrymore to have a massive role, which is precisely why they cast her in the project. And so, in a shocking turn of events (and a scene that's still effective to this day) Barrymore is stabbed and killed by the eternally creepy Ghostface, who drags her bloody corpse across the lawn and hangs it from a tree.

On top of the shock value of killing someone as famous as Barrymore in such a brutal fashion, this twist - which occurred in the very first scene - informed viewers that nobody was truly safe, creating exactly the kind of uncomfortable atmosphere you want in a horror movie.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!