9 Horror Movies That Couldn't Live Up To Their Awesome Opening

This is another choice that might feel niche perhaps, since the introduction of the movie is pure exposition funnelled in for the film's big baddie to grow from, but the way it's played out is done so well that the legend itself struggles to hold water to the unseen horrors of its opening.

Darkness Falls tells the legend of the Tooth Fairy, and that's not the one with wings covered in glitter that leaves you coins under your pillow when you're getting gummy, but Matilda Dixon - a real life (in this world at least), kindly old woman that is loved by children for giving them gold coins in exchange for their teeth. Bit weird, but hey, have to get dentures somehow.

Matilda's story is told through orange-toned, flickering snapshots of the past, intercut with flames that play into her disfigurement as the tale rolls on. What works so well with this opener is that instead of the classic horror movie approach which would show Matilda's horrors in the flesh, we get what amounts to a scary story as if read from a book - eliciting the strange, dreamy qualities that allow imagination to take over in a far more effective and scary way than the film ever actually gets afterwards.

It's simple, but it works superbly.