Cinematic history has been some disturbing moments in horror movie openings, ranging from the gory to the psychologically disturbing.
It could be the iconic opening of Scream, which sees Drew Barrymore being tormented over the phone before Ghostface kills her. Or there's the eerie silence as Cillian Murphy makes his way through a completely deserted central London in 28 Days Later, which was actually closed off for filming.
Horror is of course not a monolith when it comes to the different ways in which it can exhibit the darker side of humanity. It could be a slasher like Scream, downright gory like Saw, more psychological like The Exorcist, or the fantastic campness of Killer Klownz from Outer Space.
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However, one horror opening takes things to a whole other level when it comes to being extremely memorable for the sheer level of gore and excruciating detail. It was ranked as the most shocking horror opening on ranker.com.
This is 2002's Ghost Ship, with a cast including Karl Urban of Lord of the Rings and The Boys fame. The film follows a crew of marine salvagers as they comb through a haunted ship which has gone adrift in the Bering Straight.
Sounds spooky enough by itself.
However, it's not the actual salvage and inevitable supernatural encounters on the ship that make it stick out, but the opening. This opening shows how one moment can be filmed in incredible detail in a movie.
At the start of the film, we join a group of people dancing on a ship in the 1960s and everyone is having a great time -this can't possibly end well.
Sure enough, while everyone is right in the swing of things a wire cable snaps.
There's a moment as it whips through the entire crowd, taking the heads of a bunch of flowers first, leaving us with the sight of the cable covered in blood.
The movie seems frozen in time as the horrified guests contemplate what happened. Then, one by one they start to literally fall apart after the wire bisects them. Limbs drop off, top halves separate from bottom halves. Only a little girl survives, and that's because she wasn't tall enough to be hit by the wire.
The idea is pretty horrifying in itself, but the way it's done and the effects it shows, definitely crosses over into the camper side of horror as well. Something that is so over the top that it is almost too ridiculous to be actually scary.
However, it is certainly very memorable.
Topics: News, Film and TV, Horror
Kit Roberts