Opening kill
The opening kill is a trope in Slasher films where a victim or victims are killed in the opening scene of the movie.
The Scream franchise, in particular, is notable for its use of opening kills, which subvert the viewers’ expectations, and first popularised the trope by famously marketing actress Drew Barrymore as the star of Scream only for her to serve as the opening kill. In Scream 2 they repeated this tactic by casting Jada Pinkett Smith as the opening kill. In Scream 3, however, the opening kill, played by Kelly Rutherford was not marketed alongside the rest of the cast, as returning character Cotton Weary played by Liev Schreiber also was killed in the first act, which overshadowed the death of Rutherford’s character. Scream 4’s opening was criticised for being too “meta”, featuring two fake-out openings that were actually in-universe movies created based upon the killings of the past three movies, the first starring Lucy Hale as opening kill, and the second starring Anna Paquin as opening kill with Kristen Bell as in-universe killer. The real opening of the movie, strangely, did not include any stars or big names. In Scream (2022), Jenna Ortega’s character, Tara, becomes the first opening kill to survive her initial attack. There is no technical opening kill in the film as a result of this, yet she is still widely regarded as the opening kill star. Ortega’s character survives until the end of the film, marking her as one of Scream’s final girls, alongside characters portrayed by Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox. The latest instalment of the franchise, Scream VI cast modern scream queen Samara Weaving as its opening kill. While nothing was too shocking in the opening kill itself, the killer was revealed instantly after, only to be killed himself in the next scene.
References
This article "Opening kill" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Opening kill. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
