20 Perfect Scenes In Otherwise Terrible Horror Movies
11. The Hunt - The Opening Massacre
What is the most disappointing horror movie of the 2020s so far? There are plenty of contenders, but The Hunt is definitely up there, mainly because of all the pre-release handwringing.
This one came armed with an amazing premise - a hunt with humans instead of animals - and, much to many people's disappointment, its release got cancelled in late 2019 due to controversies over its content and accusations of it being a fantasy about killing Trump voters. Once The Hunt was finally released in early 2020, it turned out everyone had got it wrong. Firstly, those killing the Trump voters are unambiguously the villains, and secondly, it's actually a very tame affair that makes The Purge films look like masterpieces by comparison.
Having said this, when you first walked in, you probably thought The Hunt would live up to the hype after all, for that opening sequence is absolute dynamite. In this opener, a whole slew of characters - including several played by well-established actors such as Emma Roberts - get killed off in gory ways, and it's a sequence that's as bracingly intense as it is darkly comedic.
The only real problem with it is that viewers will spend the rest of the movie wondering where all that energy went. In terms of strong openings to bad movies, this is definitely one of the most striking examples from the last few years.