10 Opening Credit Sequences That Were Better Than The Films That Followed

3. Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

The Opening Credit Sequence: Sticking with Snyder, his remake of the Romero classic opens in spectacularly sinister fashion. Another film to meld news reports and found footage to devastating effect, the introductory montage places us at the very peak of a pandemic. Or rather, pandemonium. Is it a virus? No one knows. Is it airborne? ''It's a possibility...'' This set-up may sound like a tacky B-movie but, when interspersed with the split-second flashes of zombie attacks, it's downright terrifying. Best of all, the credits are written in blood- not the syrupy stuff of Sweeney Todd but the surgical, slashed-wrist sort. These letters are then sprayed off the screen as though blown by an invisible straw. All the while, Johnny Cash's perfectly ominous 'When The Man Comes Around' convinces you that this really could be the end of days. The film: Snyder Syndrome strikes again: superb sequence, mediocre movie. Had the above montage continued for the duration of the film, this would undoubtedly be one of the most frightening additions to the zombie genre. Instead it results to overkill. The gore is ramped up to earn an R certificate and the survivors, still trapped in the mall, have to simply shoot their way out. As a result, and this may not necessarily be considered a drawback, most of the film feels like a video game. Mostly, critics were outraged not by the zombies' ferocity but their apparent athleticism- they certainly couldn't run like that in the Seventies.