Introducing Horror

 What Makes a Good Horror Opening?

As horror is my decided genre for my opening, I decided to look at some film openings of the horror genre, ranging from the subgenre of monster and slasher movies, to psychological and supernatural horror films.

Scream (1996) dir. Wes Craven

The opening to Wes Craven's Scream is among one of the most famous film openings of all time. This opening begins with Drew Barrymore's character, Casey, answering the phone while home alone. An unfamiliar voice is on the other end of the line, of which is the voice acting is provided by Roger L. Jackson.  This generated one of the most famous lines in horror, "What's your favorite scary movie?"

The scene takes a twist when Casey threatens to hang up, but the other voice gets upset over this. She hangs up and the voice gets verbally aggressive, threatening to kill her. The scene intensifies, then leading Casey to see the body of her boyfriend outside. In order to save him, she must answer questions based on horror films, althoughs he gets one wrong pertaining to the villain of the original Friday the 13th. As the boyfriend is killed off, she realizes she is next. She runs out of the house, only to be chased down by the killer. 

This opening scene reveals almost everything about the rest of the film. The killer is a horror fan, which sets up the commentary on slashers that the film is trying to tell. It is a slasher about slashers. The self-awareness just in the opening. Drew Barrymore's character would have been read as the "perky, innocent blonde as Scream's main character and been primed to relate to her." It acklowedges the tropes set by other horror films and twists them. She was presented as a typical "final girl" character but was killed at only the beginning of the movie. It sets up the idea of how the film will break the cliches of the genre before we even see them on screen.

In addition, the use of a mask character, which is common in the slasher genre, adds an element of mystery already to the piece. The costuming of ghostface, the alias of the killers in the movie, is used to obscure their body. The black robe they wear obscures their body, leaving a harder time for the audience to discover who the main killer(s) are. The mask also aligns itself with other masked horror icons, such as Michael Myers, Leatherface and Jason.

Ex. Art depicting several iconic horror masks.

Nope (2022) dir. Jordan Peele

Nope is a blend of the sci-fi and horror genre. It takes the typical conventions of horror, like its sound elemnts, and combines them with the aspects of aliens in sci-fi. However, its opening does not align itself with aliens at all.

The scene depicted is increadibly graphic, so if you are made uncomfortable by this, I suggest skip to after the scene summary and video.

The film opens with the production company logos for the film but with cheesy dialogue and a sitcom laugh track in the background. The only name we are given through the exchanges of  birthday gift giving is "Gordy." We are not shown the character yet, but they do not speak. The audience claps as the final production logo is shown, but the screen goes black accompanied by a hitting noise. The screen stays on this black screen and this fight continues, hearing pleas for help, the audience left unable to do anything to make it stop.

A bible quote appears on screen, of which the quote is from Nahum 3:6. The quote is about how a path of exploitation only leads towards death and destruction. This is a main theme of the movie about how you cannot make a spectacle out of danger, yet it is confusing when no chracters have been shown. This can only be assumed to be connected to the sitcom-type show being played in the background.

The first shot in the film is the perspective of a child on the show. We are shown a sitcom set that has been destroyed and a chimpanzee in the foreground. The site is covered in blood, especially on the costume of the animal. The animal calms down as a show is upright on the ground with no explanation. The shot closes with the chimpanzee looking directly at the camera, before the film cuts to black one more time.

This opening sets up the themes shown later in the film, the danger of a spectacle. The audience can infer this monkey has been trained to be in this live-studio production but snapped. This show is making a profit off of a creature and taking advatange of him, enforcing how you cannot tame a wild animal. However, it only fits in to one of the character's story and development. Jupe, played by Steven Yeun, sees the alien creature, later named Jean Jacket, and wants to use it for one of his shows. His background with Gordy shows his ignorance for not learning the dangers of wanting to make a profit from a wild animal.

The sound design really sticks out, once the first attack happens, the audience is gone. There is no laugh track, applauds or screams, just the people on set. It adds a sense of loneliness and danger as it is feared that no one will come save them from this animal. Sound is the main element of this opening, as there is not much movement in the visual elements, so the audience relies on it to piece together what is happening in the film.

Re-Animator (1985) dir. Stuart Gordon

The opening scene of Re-Animator, like Scream, shows every aspect of the film in just a few minutes.

We see a Swiss university in the establishing shot, shown by the university sign displaying the city "Zurich." The bottom of the sign can be interpreted that this location is one for medical purposes. This is solidified by the costuming of some of the people in the halls, as one woman is wearing a white coat that is synonymous with doctors. This womans leads a man and several police officers to a door, briefly displaying a name tag on the door for the name of one of the doctors, but the name being called does not correlate with the one on the door. There is screaming as well, adding mystery to what is happening in the sceme.

As the screaming starts spiraling into the sound of glass breaking, this causes the officers to spark into action. Herbert West, prtrayed by Jeffrey Combs, is restrained away from the screaming man on the floor. The man, named Dr. Gruber, on the floor stands up, his eyes exploding with blood before collapsing once more. West is accused of murder for this gorey scene before delivering the name "I gave him life" as it cuts to the opening credits.

The audience is left to question what West meant with that line, especially after seeing Gruber die on-screen. However the makeup and special effects done on Gruber add some strange aspects as his skin had a greyish-purple tone to it, almost mimicking that of a corpse. 

The sounds from before they entered the room also speculate that this is something that West may have caused. This is cleared up later in the film with the introduction of his reagent, but there are slight hints of it in the dialogue in the opening, with West stating the "dosage" was too large, a slight explanation for what exactly happened to Gruber. It is a conscious choice to not directly reveal what caused the death, but to listen to the dialogue for what may ahve happened.

What Did I Learn?

Watching these openings really helped me understand the important of dialogue. Out of the three film openings I watched, both Scream and Re-Animator had phrases that connected to the main theme of the film. The opening is meant to give a glimpse into what is to come, so using dialogue is especially important. These are also naturally said, which does not talk down to its audience into what exactly is happening. Looking into more horror scripts may help with typical conventions used in popular films so I know what I have to write make my opening effective.

Costume design is also very important. Each one of these films openings had distinctive looks to each character that represented who they were without much development. Gordy from the film Nope is the best example out of the three. He is a monkey dressed in a yellow sweater. Yellow is often associated with happiness, but can also represent danger. By dressing Gordy in human clothes, it represents how he was tried to be tamed for the purpose of being a spectacle, exactly what the film's message was.

Each element of an opening is important. By analyzing these, it gave me a better look into the ideas I want to create in my opening, especially when having no budget.

I will most likely watch some more openings over the weekend, possibly more independent films since that is the style I want to replicate the most.