Horror Conventions: Opening Kill

In this blog post I look at one of the key stereotypes and conventions in horror: the opening kill. It's something that we want to replicate in our film opening since it helps us anchor the film as a horror in the first minutes of the film. I will be looking directly at the kill part of the film opening and how it was done in different slasher sub-genres.

Scream (1996)

Genre: Slasher, however it satirizes the cliches of the slasher genre

This opening sequence is lengthier than most, coming to be 13 minutes long, however, it has all the necessary elements: a girl home alone being stalked by her killer. Casey Becker, played by an A-list celebrity (Drew Barrymore) is your stereotypical Scream queen. The dynamic between the killer, Ghostface, is unique with their back and forth arguing and Casey striking back. 

This film opening play with the concept of a struggling victim well, with Casey striking Ghostface with the phone which he call her on. We don't see the final kill in the opening and it is masked with an ellipses and a slashing audio bridge which carries over. Something we would want to replicate in our film opening.

The final shot we see is a bloody dagger and a black glove of the killer.

Haloween (1978)

Genre: Slasher

The Halloween opening with it's iconic plot twist, tells the story from the pint of view of the antagonist, the killer. It uses a popular technique in horror, using the POV shot, showing the scene through the killer's eyes. 

Michael uses a kitchen knife to stab the half naked teen girl. We never actually see the stab in graphic detail, just glimpses of the the knife and the girl screaming in agony. Something we would want to replicate in our film. 

Ready or Not (2019)

Ready or Not comes from horror film collective Radio Silence, who would go on to work on Scream (2022) and Scream VI, and is one of the more intriguing horror-comedies of the 2010s. While simultaneously a movie about the dysfunctions of a huge family and about the perils of cults, Ready or Not manages to be a lot more than any of that thematic mumbo jumbo. 

Take its opening scene, for example. You see a groom running around a huge Victorian manor trying to escape someone or something, only to come face to face with a young boy. He pleads to the child to not say anything to those chasing the man before the child pulls out a gun and kills the man. Everything you need to know about the film is set up in that opening kill, even though we don't quite know that yet. It's a fascinating way of starting a film like Ready or Not, considering so much of the film's charm only comes in the second and third acts. Regardless, it has a first kill that makes a huge impression and sets the rest of the film in motion.

The scene is effective with its floating tracking shots of the two children, contrasting this pure childlike naivety with a grusome act. 

Psycho (1960)

Is there a first kill that is more iconic or well-known than that of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho? It's a classic bit of intentional misdirect, as the audience has been led to believe that Janet Leigh is going to be the main protagonist for the entire film, only for her to be murdered off in the first 30 minutes of the film. Psycho's first kill was not only groundbreaking for how it flipped an entire concept on its head and ushered in the proto-genre of slashers, but it also served to set up a legendary film for greatness. Not only all of that, but it also served as direct inspiration for the opening kill of Scream and helped to break down barriers in terms of censorship laws in films. Psycho changed a lot more than just expectations of where it's second act would go.

It (2017)

2017's reboot of Stephen King's IT was one for the history books. It made a lot of money and introduced a lot of people to the horrific gaze of Pennywise, mostly due to the opening scene of the film. When young Georgie goes out to let his paper boat sail in the overflowing sewer drains, his boat ends up falling into one of the drains. While looking for the boat, he comes face to face with a clown in the drain: Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Some creepy banter and scary implications happen and then, as Georgie is reaching into the drain to retrieve his boat, his arm is ripped off by Pennywise, and then he is dragged into the drain, never to be seen again. It's a confident, horrific way to start your film, but it really sets the tone of the film perfectly. There is a lot of narrative enigma around Georgie's death leading the viewer to imagine it in the most grusome way.