4 Horror Movie Opening Sequences So Good They're Better That The Rest of The Movie

Happy almost Halloween everyone!

No I'm not done talking about it. Because I love this season! I think that a powerful movie opening can really set your film up for greatness. However tons of people do lists of greatest movie openings. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Lion King, and the Godfather being some of my favorites.

However since it's the season of the witch, I thought it would be more fun to look specifically at horror movies. However, I found that tons of websites have done that already as well. So instead of focusing on the amazing intro sequence to Jaws or Scream or The Ring. I want to focus on intro's so good they actually trump the rest of the film. I'm talking about Horror movie intros that are so well done, the movie basically blows its load right at the start of the film.


Darkness Falls

Easily the weakest film on this list. Darkness Falls was a horror movie that was basically about a demented tooth fairy.

No, Not this one. 

It sounds silly but it does a good job of playing on childhood fears. Basically this ghost/demon/creature comes into your room on the night you lose your last baby tooth. This creature hates the light so it waits in the darkest corner of your room. If you're asleep she won't bother you. But if you're awakened by her raspy breathing, then you'd better hide under the covers and shut your eye's tight. Because if you look at her, even for a second, she kills you on the spot. Even if you're fast enough to turn on the lights before she reaches you you're still screwed. You see, she never forgets and will wait for you in the dark until she has the opportunity to kill you again.

The movie starts off with a creepy backstory about this woman who loved to act as the tooth fairy and give children money for their baby teeth.

 She was horribly burned and was basically allergic to the light. So, she stayed cloaked and wore a porcelain Mask so no one would ever look upon her horribly scarred face.

Aside from the fact that no kid would ever hang around an old lady with that fucking creepy ass mask on, it's a cool intro story. After you find out how she was tragically killed you understand why she haunts this town. The story begins with our hero loosing his last tooth. After a retelling of the story he goes to bed and is visited by the ghost. I don't want to spoil the whole sequence but we get to see how deadly and powerful this spirit is. And how pissed she gets when anyone looks at her.  It's creepy, scary and fun all at once. I remember this intro really stood out to me as fantastic.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film is a paint by numbers horror movie full of cliches and stupid fucking characters. It does nothing new or special and it quickly destroys all of that goodwill created by the intro to the movie.

Honestly if this was a short film and only 15 minutes long, I'd say "Look out for this director" or "what an amazing short film, I can't wait to see what they do next." But nope, they follow up a truly creepy opening with a lackluster film that leaves you bored around the halfway mark.

It should have ended after this amazing shot. They boy hides himself in the bathroom with the light on. The thing breaks open the door and shrieks in pain as the light hits it. As the camera pans back from him hiding in the tub you see the creature right above the doorway. Just waiting there, hoping that the kid is foolish enough to get close enough to the bathroom door so it can grab him and drag him off screaming into the darkness.

Friday the 13th Remake

I have my issues with the Friday the 13th remake but it has it's moments. I wasn't really a fan of the way that the kills were pretty boring. And interesting kills are pretty vital to a slasher film. Also the way the white characters kinda just abandon both token minority characters at the same time without a thought. Maybe they were trying to say something profound about race relations but it really seemed like they just straight up ditched them and didn't really seem to give a shit afterward and it's never addressed again in the movie.

But the intro to the film was fantastic. So most people don't know, Jason didn't get his signature look till about the 3rd movie. The first movie didn't have Jason at all. The second movie he was wearing a potato sack on his head. Seriously a fucking potato sack.

The third movie he finally gets his Hockey Mask and Jason's iconic look is complete. The intro to this movie basically runs through the first two movies to get to the third. It starts with Jason's mother having already done her massacre a long time ago. One by one he takes out both kids who are having sex, and others doing drugs. But it's the way he kills that's so effective. he does it quickly and mercilessly. You barely see him it's almost like the forest itself is killing the kids.

The kills are so brutal and so quick its just an awesome scene. Also, he doesn't just come through and stab everyone, which is what he does the rest of the film. The variety of kills and just the pure energy of the scene make it seem like it was filmed by someone other that the guy who did the rest of the movie.


Evil Dead Remake

I love the original series. And I thought the remake was really well done. I loved the horrific practical effects that they used. The only thing negative I can really say about the film is the absence of Bruce Campbell.

Groovy

But while the movie was really well done. That intro was everything I loved about the original movies. It starts off with what looks like it's going to be a nasty human sacrifice with this poor girl crying and begging for her life. I don't want to spoil what happens next but it is disgusting, bloody, awesome, even funny, and it totally sets you up for what sort of film you're watching. I highly recommend you check it out.

28 Weeks Later

I actually liked 28 weeks later quite a bit. It wasn't amazing like 28 days later, but 28 weeks later does provide us with one of the best openings to any horror film. In this sequel we start off after the plague is in full effect and people are hiding in their homes, hoping none of the infected find them. Remember these aren't zombies, these are fully mobile, fast moving, infected. Teeth gnashing and nails scratching. You don't want to fuck with these guys.

You notice the little bit of normalcy these people having making dinner, living in a house with all the windows and cracks blocked off so their's no chance of one of the monsters seeing them. You also hear the fear when they think they hear a person outside.



What's crazy is how in just a few minutes you feel that these people are totally secure in their home and that they are safe. All it takes is for one person to look out through a tiny crack and get spotted. A whole horde of them break the house into splinters and send everyone running for their life. It's such a tense and terrifying sequence that it's impossible to watch without your heartrate being jacked up by the end of it. You can feel the terror, and  it's bad enough that you can understand how it could make a man abandon his family as pure panic take over his system.

It's just a great sequence to see, and the music is perfect. It's so unnerving every time I watch I can feel my heart rate rising. While I don't think the rest of the movie is bad, but this is easily the most memorable part of the whole film.

Why Most Modern Horror Sucks: Practical vs. Digital effects

In 1992 an amazing film about dinosaurs was released and it changed the way we view movies. Because in that movie audiences saw something they’ve never seen before. Digital Effects.

Now since then everything has been made digital. All our monsters are created on a computer and all actors do is scream at green screens. And I have to say it fucking sucks.

I'm sorry was I supposed to think that was real?

Oh I see I wasn't supposed to think at all when watching this movie. 

Jurassic Park worked so well because Spielberg used both practical and digital effects. Since then film makers have taken to using just digital effects and as a result our horror movies are suffering.

Practical effect for close ups. 

Digital effects for moving shots

Lets think back to a wondrous far away land called the 70’s and 80’s. Now in this land people had to actually build creepy effects and because of it the monsters actually looked scarier. By the way if you haven't already seen Alien, Predator, Dead Alive, The Thing, and The Fly you really need to.

In 1982 there was an amazing movie called ‘The Thing’. Many people consider it, next to Alien, the greatest science fiction horror movie ever made. In the movie they had the some of the greatest visual effects ever made.

And the psychic duel at the end of scanners still amazes me. Look what can be done without a computer. 

Now wasn't that unsettling?

But now we digitize everything and it just looks fake. While watching a movie if I notice a large creature or anything that moves really quickly I instantly know that I’m just looking at an effect and nothing real. We even digitize blood nowadays. And honestly I think for the most part that it looks crappy. There isn’t much creepy about what’s obviously a stupid effect. Lets look at a famous scene from Nightmare on Elm Street.

Image from Ohmar's blog

In the original 1984 version this shot was creepy and it looked great. In the 2010 remake they used a digital effect and it was..... boring.

What’s frustrating is this is a simple fucking effect. You put up a thin sheet of fabric made to look like wall and you light it from the front. Then have somebody rub against it from the back. It’s cheap, it’s simple, and it’s easy. Making it digital just ruined it. To me it seems like lazy film making. Producers aren’t willing to put out the money to pay a special effects team and films suffer because of it. 

Think all the digital blood effects in 300 look cool? Does it bother no one else that there is blood flying everywhere but not a drop on the ground? It basically makes your movie have the realism of Mortal Kombat. 

I mean seriously digital blood!?! How expensive is it to get a few damn blood packs. The problem with practical effects is that they are unpredictable and harder to control. When the effects are done on a computer by a team of programmers the director can make them look just like they want them. But if we really want to amaze people we need to have something real in front of them. 

Imagine what Audrey II would have looked like if she were all-digital. Imagine Jaws with a purely digital shark.

Imagine if the exorcist spider scene didn’t look like this.

It looked like this scene with the old woman climbing on the wall.

I understand that having a digital effect means that they can re edit it as many times as the director wants. But considering the hundreds of millions that these movies make, they can afford to hire a special effects team if they really wanted to. In fact it’s the work that goes into practical effects that make them special.

If that wasn't enough I have one more example. Check out what is probably the greatest werewolf transformation scene of all time. A werewolf in London, 1981

And check out what they did with it in the 1997 sequel American werewolf in Paris. 

Digital effects are great. The way they were used in some films are perfect. But we over use it. We make even the simplest of effects digital. This affects all genres but horror is hit the worst. When you know that you’re looking at something fake it takes away from the tension. There's been only three times in my life that I saw something and was unsure if it was digital or practical: Jurassic Park, Avatar, and that tiger in Life of Pi. Other than that, the digital monsters take me out of the movie. We need to petition Hollywood and tell them to stop fucking up.... well that could correspond to lots of things, but right now lets get some practical effects going. The new Evil Dead remake using practical effects is a step in the right direction. Let’s hope that the rest of Hollywood takes notice.