10 Horror Movies That Never Got Better Than Their Opening Moments
2. Cube
Cube is no doubt an entertaining sci-fi horror flick which makes shrewd use of its low budget to deliver a claustrophobic, tightly wound thriller in which a group of strangers attempt to escape the trap-filled labyrinth of cube-shaped rooms they've found themselves sealed within.
Cube is filled with memorably gnarly death scenes as the various characters start falling afoul of the cube's devilishly tricky traps, but filmmaker Vincenzo Natali gets the best one out of the way in the movie's first three minutes.
The film begins with a man, Alderson (Julian Richings), waking up in one of the cubes and eventually working up the courage to try entering one of the adjoining rooms.
At first everything seems normal, but after Alderson takes an additional couple of steps, he's suddenly stopped literally dead in his tracks. He goes stiff and his body begins to bleed in grid-like lines, before his body spectacularly falls to pieces.
A moment later, a wire mesh grid rolls into view before retracting, revealed to be the cause of his insanely nasty demise.
It's by far the most memorable, even iconic scene in the film, enough that it was seemingly "homaged" by Paul W.S. Anderson in his first Resident Evil movie - though Anderson has dubiously claimed any similarity was a mere coincidence.