5 Best Horror Movie Opening Scenes Of All Time, Ranked

Some horror movies slowly build tension, enveloping the viewer in a sense of dread that almost makes it a relief once hell breaks loose. It's difficult to create an effective horror opening that establishes the stakes whilst freaking viewers out, as the more intense an introduction, the harder it is for the horrors that unfold afterwards to live up to the deadly promise at the start. There are plenty of bad horror movies with great opening sequences, starting strong but ultimately failing precisely because they couldn't sustain the evil energy they began with.

This is why, for this feature, we're only counting the opening scenes of movies that lived up to the promise of their introductions. The movies we've chosen range from cult classics that lean towards campy horror-comedy, to masterpieces of the genre that boldly announced themselves as such from the first minute onwards. Many of these movies rewrote audience expectations for horror from the get-go, while others perfected a specific brand of horror set piece that pushed us further to the edge of our seats than we thought possible. They may differ in tone, but each one is just as iconic as the last.

Jason Voorhees never needed a license to kill, but with Roger Moore having hung up his tuxedo and Timothy Dalton yet to make his debut, someone needed to step into the shoes of 007. After the underperformance of 1985's "A New Beginning," in which Jason's young killer Tommy Jarvis from "The Final Chapter" was taunted by a hockey-mask wearing copycat, the producers decided to go down the Bond route and simply resurrected their iconic villain.

Thom Matthews takes over from John Shepherd as the protagonist, newly released from a hospital for the criminally insane, with the intent of returning to Crystal Lake, digging up Jason's (C. J. Graham) body and cremating it, ending his intense waking nightmares once and for all. Instead, an intervention from a lightning bolt resurrects Jason as a newly superhuman killer -– and if you're asking questions or poking fun at plot holes, you're watching this delightfully silly movie wrong.

The tone is set by the end of this tongue-in-cheek cold open. Newly dug out from his grave, Jason puts on his hockey mask, and we zoom into his eyeball, where we see him cooly walk into the center of the frame and throw a knife at the screen, just like the Bond gun barrel sequences, but far bloodier. It was the perfect introduction to a newly self-aware franchise (and one of the best instalments overall), inviting audiences to get in on the joke from its first moments.

Any lifeguard will tell you that you shouldn't get drunk before going in the water, but Steven Spielberg's blockbuster classic takes a slightly different approach; getting absolutely blottoed is what saved the young man in the scene from meeting his maker in the sea. This unnamed kid thinks he's had a meet-cute with free spirit Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie), and runs with her down to the beach, but is too tipsy to skinny dip with her, passing out on the shore instead. While he's dozing, she is attacked by the unseen Great White, and her calls for help go unheard.

It's an unshakable opening largely thanks to Backlinie's performance, making a vivid impression in a brief scream queen sequence that firmly establishes the life-or-death stakes for Amity Island's residents ahead of the Fourth of July weekend. Most impressively, Spielberg leaves the brutal nature of her death largely within the viewer's imagination; the water doesn't turn blood red as she's being chewed up, and due to the infamous technical problems of the mechanical shark, we don't see so much as a fin patrolling the waters.

"Jaws" is immediately effective because it doesn't need to rely on special effects to hammer home the horror, using just the terrified screams of its actress juxtaposed with the indifference of nature around her. This scene alone was enough for millions to avoid going in the water after seeing it.

Most of the introductory disasters in the Final Destination franchise could be included here. The plane crash from the first movie, the rollercoaster disaster from "3," and the destruction of the Sky Tower restaurant from "Bloodlines" are all worthy contenders –- the latter could claim the title just on the strength of killing an annoying kid with a falling piano. But no set piece has had as enduring a hold in the cultural consciousness quite like the premonition that opens "Final Destination 2," one of the most elaborate movie car crashes ever that changed the way entire generations viewed logging trucks. If you've seen this movie, you will absolutely bring it up every time you drive past one, much to the horror of your fellow passengers.

Every "Final Destination" cold open follows the same formula, but the genius is in how all the pieces of the inevitable death and destruction are put front and center, finding increasingly hilarious ways to misdirect from what items will involved in the carnage. Here, the cars behind the log truck include one with an open hot coffee next to the driver's seat, a coked-up driver refusing to wear a seatbelt, and a motorcyclist speeding too fast between each vehicle. None of these pay off as expected, but that doesn't matter once the logs start careening towards them. It's a masterclass in quickly, brutally escalating an already ingenious concept, playing out like the bloodiest action spectacle Michael Bay never made.

Before the "slasher" was popularized as a genre by the John Carpenter classic, the POV shot had been utilized in earlier movies whose influence you can feel in its DNA. The cold open to Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom" in 1960 made the audience complicit in the crimes of its killer through this technique –- making it even bolder than Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" that same year -– and sicko holiday classic "Black Christmas" similarly introduced its killer stalking his victims from that perspective.

Carpenter's unbroken, near five-minute single take bests both to create one of the most powerful villain introductions the genre has ever seen, stalking young Michael's (Will Sandin) family home from a child's perspective, feeling like the supernatural POV of a ghost rather than a young boy. There couldn't be a more fitting introduction to a figure who would quickly be viewed in this mythic light. Complimented by Carpenter's score largely sustaining one dread-inducing note, we watch as Michael climbs up the stairs, puts on a clown mask, and brutally kills his sister Judith (Sandy Johnson), the gut-punch reveal of a scared-looking kid on his front lawn wielding a knife is still effective even now.

Followed immediately by the genre's coolest opening credits scene and the best theme of them all, few movies have ever set the mood quite like "Halloween." Most impressively, despite the elaborate planning required to pull off such a sequence, Carpenter made it appear effortless.

Wes Craven may have wanted to poke fun at the slasher genre he helped popularize, but the opening scene of his meta-comedy horror "Scream" used its self-referentiality to create something of a post-modern equivalent to the "Psycho" shower scene. Like Hitchcock, Craven killed off his movie's big star without warning, leaving unsuspecting viewers shocked and confused after a darkly hilarious sequence about movie conventions and slasher villains turned deadly. After all, Drew Barrymore featured extensively in the marketing materials -– it was all a glorious misdirect that helped "Scream" reset the tired rules of a genre it joked about upholding.

Even without the transgressive nature of killing the sole A-lister on the call sheet, the opening to "Scream" is a masterclass in tension, juxtaposing the initially innocuous call between Casey Becker (Barrymore) and Ghostface with all the visual tricks we'd expect from a slasher –- the camera stalking her around the house, transforming the viewer into a voyeur. By the time the killer reveals her boyfriend is tied up in the garden, and that he'll only be saved by her movie trivia knowledge, Craven reveals that the meta gags about other franchises won't make his murder mystery any less brutal.

It's a terrifically effective opening sequence the franchise has never topped, even if it has gotten close. "Scream" played so fast and loose with expectations right out of the gate, that element of shock has been replaced with one of morbid anticipation in all the installments that followed.