10 Scariest Horror Movie Opening Credits

8. Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

Dawn Of The Dead 2004 Opening Credits
Universal Pictures

A transformative moment in the zombie genre, Zack Snyder's 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake remains a high point for the director and a fine example of how remakes can stand alongside a vaunted classic by taking a diverging approach.

The 2004 Dawn of the Dead's vicious, post-9/11 recalibration is made clear immediately - first with its 10-minute introductory sequence and then again with its terrific opening titles, which combine amateur video footage with news reports and grimy photography set to the cataclysmic resignation of Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around". They do a great job of making it seem as if the world really is coming to an end, while the credits themselves appear and bleed out with a crunch - as if the infection is creasing into the stock itself.

Dawn of the Dead's introductory scene tends to get most of the plaudits for reeling viewers into its unfurling apocalypse, but its opening credits are a portentous suffix that hammers home the scale of what is happening.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.