Review by Toby Clark

Directed by: Vincenzo Natali

Staring: Maurice Dean, Nicole Deboer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Wayne Robson, Andrew Miller and Julian Richings.

This movie opens with a bald man called Alderson according to the label on his jumper, waking up inside a giant cubic room, about 14 feet on all edges. He tries the doors around him, each leading to a room almost identical except for the colour. But when he takes three steps into a second room, he is stopped in his tracks. A sheet of wire mesh sweeps across the room and cuts him into pieces.

One by one, six more characters are introduced in this maze, Quentin, an aggressive and violent police detective; Worth, a cynical engineer who knows more about the Cube than he is letting on; Leaven a young maths genius; Holloway a doctor, Rennes an ex-con who seems to have a history of escaping fro prisons; and Kazan, an autistic savant who is also good with numbers.

As six prisoners attempt to find a way out, they must avoid the traps such as the mesh trap from the first scene. Other traps include a flamethrower, an acid spray, an iron maiden and a wire trap which must be seen to be understood. But the worst threat to these prisoners, not surprisingly, is each other.

With only two gory death scenes, the movie is not as violent as other slasher movies (although that’s still 29% of the of the cast!). Think of this movie as a really toned down ‘Saw’, set inside a giant Rubik’s Cube. I like this movie because of the threat of the traps, and the way the prisoners turn on each other. But the skills required to find the way out of the cube don’t make much sense.

Leaven’s math skills are apparently crucial to finding booby-trapped rooms, although her deductions are usually wrong, incomprehensible or both. Every room has three-digit numbers written on the doorways, and Leaven goes from ‘if one of these numbers is prime, the room is trapped’, to ‘the numbers are Cartesian coordinates’. Both of these theories made sense, but neither seem to be right, and her next conclusion is so incomprehensible and convoluted the Kazan is the one who has to do the math for her. The ending is also not very satisfactory, and the journey is arguably a waste of time, both for the audience and characters. I wont explain why as the reason is, ironically, a surprise ending.

Not having seen any of these actors before or since, I can not comment on if they’re up to whatever their usual standard is, but Quentin is a bit one-dimensional. All he does is threaten people and should a lot in general.

I doubt that much skill was required for Kazan either: no offence meant to the autistic, especially give how crucial the character was in the end, but the actor is more wooden than the average Vulcan. Alderson was much better, considering that he appears for about a minute without speaking and then gets killed. Worth is my favourite, because he has the most to hide at the beginning, and because of his pessimism based on the knowledge that escape is virtually impossible. These qualities make him a deeper character than Quentin.
Overall, I give this movie 3 starts, and I also recommend Cube @: Hypercube. The plot is almost identical except it is set in four dimensions instead of three. I challenge you to work that one out without seeing it.