Cube. This is one of those 1990s films that everyone seems to have watched at some point, but no-one can remember many of the details outside of “Saw but with a single room.” The film was a commercial flop yet remains beloved by fans of sci-fi horror. Why? And does it still stack up after all these years? Let’s take a look.
There’ll be a few spoilers here but, honestly, there’s not much plot to spoil. The film opens with a man in a prison suit waking up in a strange room, with hatches to adjoining rooms on the walls, roof and floor. After stepping into the next room, he is immediately turned into chutney by a trap. With this less-than-optimistic start, the story turns to a group of five people who have no memory of how or why they came to be here. As they try to navigate through the deadly maze, paranoia and rivalry sets in, raising questions of what price the characters are willing to pay to survive.
The goal of the film is pretty straight forward – find a way out or die – but the stakes and urgency are easily established, and the film does some efficient groundwork in the first Act for details that become crucial in the climax. However, Cube does some pretty damn good tension, slowly developing the paranoia and suspense as the group get closer to the exit, and spiking this build-up when trap rooms are discovered. As with all good horror films, the greatest threat ends up being the survivors themselves, and actor Maurice Wint really shines here as the police officer who slowly devolves from righteous defender to sneering, violent thug.
Cube’s biggest drawback is the dialogue. I’ve played video games with better speech and characterisation. Not current video games, I’m talking “All your Base Are Belong to Us” era games. There’s very little to talk about with each character, but considering the body count, it’s hardly worth the effort. While Stargate’s David Hewlett delivers the best lines in the film as a faceless government drone who designed part of the Cube, most of the conversation is simply people snapping at each other. Not that it really matters, as the enjoyment of this move is waiting for the next trap room to turn our survivors into sushi.
This still leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Who built the cube and why? How were people selected? Also, how do they clean the bodies out of this thing? The deaths in this story were all very dramatic, but I keep imagining some weary, underpaid janitor manhandling a bucket and mop through each room afterwards, swearing under his breath as he tries to fish someone’s eyeball out of the mincing machine. Even the most elaborate evil trap still needs the person who knows where the spare parts are kept.
With all that said, Cube is still a fun, if a little silly, horror film that’s worth a look. If you have any other film suggestions, please leave a comment below!
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