BUILT ON A PREMISE as concise as its title, claustrophobic psychological horror Cube did a whole lot with very little.
It introduced us to a group of strangers who wake to find themselves trapped in their own cube-shaped prisons. Before they can figure out who has caged them and why, their mystery cubes start fighting back, punishing each incorrect escape attempt with vicious booby traps and inventive and frequently bloody kills.
27 years later, the afterlife of director Vincenzo Natali’s debut remains as alluring as ever. Spawning two direct sequels and a Japanese remake, its fingerprints can be found all over the gore-flecked “consequence horrors” of the early noughties. In hindsight, it feels like sliced so that films like James Wan’s franchise could dice – a pretty apt and deserving legacy for a movie that was so tricky to make it nearly killed
