Cube (1997)

Sex :
Violence :
Director Vincenzo Natali
Writers Andre Bijelic, Vincenzo Natali, Graeme Manson
Starring Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Maurice Dean Wint, Wayne Robson, Julian Richings
Genre Sci-Fi
Tagline Don’t look for a reason look for a way out
Country

Review

“There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.” – Worth

Every now and again a film escapes into the wild with little fanfare or anything approaching a marketing budget that becomes a cult hit. It may start out being successful in it's Country of origin but not many people outside of that Country will have heard of the movie. Then the rumours start on various places on the Net that this might just be a movie worth checking out. Reviews start floating around, generally from the genre sites without many Critics weighing in, and the film is elevated to must-watch status for many people. The trick of course is to pick the movie that lives up to its hype and not get fooled into watching something being promoted by Studio plants or the 12 year old geek out for his/her fifteen minutes. Cube arrived Downunder from Canada with zero marketing, no theatre release, and relied on word of mouth to push DVD sales. So did we get shilled or is Cube in fact the cult classic many people are claiming?

Seven strangers wake up in cubical rooms. Each side of each room has a portal to another room, including the roof and floor. Here’s where the fun starts: some of the rooms house deadly traps, others don’t.

Can divergent strangers with specialist skills, (a cop, a mathematician, a building designer, a doctor, an escape artist, and an autistic dude) band together and use their various abilities to solve the puzzle they find themselves in and get out alive? An absorbing movie ensues.

First up, if you like films that explain to the nth degree what they’re all about then read no further. Cube offers no explanations, does a Romero hint thing, and hurtles along to a conclusion that is left hanging in the air. The movie is primarily about five people, how they react to the situation they find themselves in, and solving the mathematics puzzles presented by the room numbers. Why the cube maze exists, who made it, why these particular people are in it, is left unanswered with enough hints dropped in various places to have those LAN net party arguments going on till judgement day. What you think you are hearing isn’t necessarily what you are hearing. To whit, the doctor knowing a bit more about Quentin than he is comfortable with; she deduces it from his actions and not, as some have suggested, via knowing him outside of the Cube.

Director Natali starts his movie in stunning style. Some bald dude, credit listed as Alderson, finds himself in one of the rooms. He climbs through a portal into another room, and ouch, that’s got to hurt! Alderson sliced and diced like cheese for a fondue. The CGI is pretty effective, and with a couple of other scenes this is one of the few gore-filled shock effects the director aims at. Goes down in my horror hall of fame as a totally unexpected death scene that is not only well constructed visually, but lets the audience know that this movie is going to play for keeps.

Overall Natali keeps Cube moving along at a fair clip. You just never know when various theories about safe rooms are going to be proven incorrect, who’s going to make it to the next scene, and what new revelations are going to be made. For the first half of the film the goal for our survivors is to reach the edge of the maze, for the second half it’s to locate the way out. So there’s always a goal involved rather than simply a bunch of people wandering around aimlessly. What Natali does equally well is not bother with a whole lot of scenes of people asking “is there anyone out there” or theorising about the predicament they find themselves in. At least one of the characters knows more about the “cube” than everyone else but even he or she doesn’t know the full story.

A real plus for this movie is the group dynamic and people’s underlying attitudes being proven wrong. The doctor thinks it’s some sort of conspiracy by any of the usual targets; well not according to our resident cube expert. If we were one of those critical analysis sites we’d probably go into how this movie is a mirror image in miniature for the larger world outside but since we’re not we won’t.

There’s a couple of weak parts to the movie but I overlooked them by and largely due to the stunningly original ideas this Canadian cheapie throws onto the table. A great deal of influence is put on the noise the doors between the rooms make when they open, till the crucial scene toward the end of the movie where it appears some one has taken the time to oil a single doorway. The differing colours of the individual room doesn’t seem to have any meaning to the overall puzzle, besides Kazan wanting to go back to the blue room and not liking the red rooms, which I found strange considering the set designers had gone to the trouble to differentiate them. Of course you could argue that our survivors didn’t pick the meaning of the different colours.

Nicole de Boer (Joan Leaven) does well as the maths expert who isn’t much interested in other peoples opinions. I was buying into her performance and de Boer delivers on all fronts. Nicky Guadagni (Helen Holloway) equally delivered a top performance as the doctor who believes in “them”. Everyone else holds up well with no weak links noticeable.

Mark Korven delivered a techo-influenced score that is exactly right for the hi-tech nature of Cube.

Wow, Cube certainly lived up to its reputation and was one hell of a ride throughout. One of the few horror flicks where you can’t see the developments coming at you, this is edge of your seat stuff. Thought the resolution was somewhat callous, but then this Canadian effort was never going to bowl line and length to the viewer. I had a lot of fun with the flick and would add it to my top twenty cult movie list without any issue.

As of writing there have been two further Cube movies; Cube 2:Hypercube (2002) and the prequel Cube Zero (2004). There would appear to be no work being put in to extend the trilogy into a franchise which might indicate how the second and third movies went.

Cube was made for around $250,000 and was pretty much distributed worldwide by the indies. Dendy picked it up for Australian release. Notably the second and third movies went out under the Lionsgate banner.

Cube naturally gets a full recommendation, this is filmmaking as it should be. Low budget, people who care about what they are doing, and Actors prepared to go that extra yard for the team. If this had been a Boredwood flick, with a large budget and probably Big Willy then the movie would no doubt have grossed over $100 million though I can guarantee the nihilistic flavour to the outing would have been jettisoned. Worth checking out, heck go and buy the thing, Cube will pay you back fourfold.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  Canada delivers almost the perfect dark genre release.