Cube Review

Cube is a 1997 sci-fi/drama/mystery written by André Bijelic/Vincenzo Natali/Graeme Manson and directed by Natali. Though the film has received a mixed response with a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, it has gathered a large and dedicated fanbase that have turned it into a cult film.



Story

Five complete strangers find themselves trapped together in a strange labyrinth of connected rooms. Some of them are clear to pass through, but most are set with death traps that will kill you without fail if you step inside. It is eventually revealed that they are inside an enormous cube and assuming it has a door of some kind they can theoretically escape. If not, they will die.



One major thing I like about this movie is the tone, which is helped by the fact that (mild spoiler) we never actually see the cube that we're stuck in for the entire film. We don't know where it is, who built it or why and we don't even know what it looks like. This helps give the film this constant feeling of the unknown and the sense that the characters are just mice running some sort of sadistic maze. It's like cosmic horror; trapped within an existence that seems to have no purpose to it, orchestrated by some higher force that sees you as so beneath them that your life is just a speck in their eyes. It creates an intriguing, ominous weight to the proceedings.



The characters are kind of off, but still solid. They're given solid personality traits at the beginning which are eventually given a lot more depth and what I like about it is that we learn about the characters as they learn about each other, just like how we're discovering more about this cube at the same rate the characters do. However, sometimes the characters will do things that seem very, well, out of character. For example, Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), a cop, seems composed and compassionate with people in the beginning, but then seems completely impatient with Kazan (Andrew Miller), an autistic man. I get that it's essential to sell his character arc, but I think it could've been done better. A lot of the characters have weird moments like that which are also meant to advance their character arcs but seem really out of place in the moment.



The pacing is deliberately slow paced, letting you not only soak in the other worldly atmosphere of the cube, but also to make you feel the same agony the characters do. You feel like you've been trapped in the cube for 90 years rather than 90 mins, which helps you get more invested in their search for the exit, since you want to get out just as much as they do.



The dialogue is a mixed bag. The characters have quite a few lines that are meant to sound big and important, kind of like from an old epic from the 50s or something you'd hear in a comic book. Sometimes it really, like in a dire moment or just a moment of contemplation and downtime. Other times, however, they feel really out of place, like this one part of the film where they all start talking about human existence and whether or not there's a point to it or if humans even deserve to live and it just comes out of nowhere. There's no segue into it, it has nothing to do with what their goal is in the cube or what's going on; it's just pointless. It's like the writers started reading philosophy books half way through the writing process. Or maybe they just decided their movie needed a theme, but didn't know how to squeeze it into a B-movie thriller.



Technical

The level of skill present in this production is best encapsulated in the very first scene. There's absolutely no dialogue, so the camera is the one telling the story. The design of the cube is immediately eye catching, mysterious and vaguely cosmic. The costume design of a grey jumpsuit emulating a prison uniform adds an Orwellian layer to the whole thing. And it even manages to tell its own mini story in only a minute and a half. It's so damn good I honestly think you could've slapped the words "The End" on the end of the scene, made it a short film and it would've been completely satisfying.



Even though the technical aspects never really reach that height again throughout the rest of the film, everything is still pretty solid. The cinematography is good, with camera movement and shakiness only being used when the scene needs to ramp up the intensity. The design of the different cube rooms don't really change (the result of them only shooting on a single sound stage), but they add a different color to each room to spice things up. What I like about their use of color is that they're all harsh colors which ramp up the tension and claustrophobia instead of just using flat colors that will fulfill the requirement of, "Look, the colors changed. That means we've changed scenes."



The acting is pretty good, with all of the actors convincingly portraying fear, panic, hope, cynicism and anger. I think the best actor in the whole movie is Andrew Miller, who plays the autistic Kazan. Portraying somebody with a mental disorder isn't as easy as you might think and the fact that Miller pulls it off without a hitch is cause for applause.



There a couple of weird things on the technical side of the film, one of them being music. In most scenes its just functional background noise so that the film isn't completely silent. When you do start to notice it, however, it's only because it's being very weird. There's this chanting thing that's in some of the score that I think is supposed to be ominous and creepy, but that just reminded me of Jeremy Irons from that awful Dungeons and Dragons movie. You'll see what I mean if you watch it.



Another weird thing is the editing. Again, most of the time it's fine, especially in the intense moments. The editor really knows when to cut and when to let a shot just play out to ramp up the tension during a death trap scene. However, a lot of the scene transitions (in fact I think all of them) are fades. I understand that it's used to show the passage of time between cubes, but sometimes it's very odd. For example, there's a scene where they give a really important piece of information to the audience (I mean each other) and it's only like a few seconds long. Instead of just cutting to the next scene, which might've felt a bit quick but still would've worked, it fades into the next scene right after we just faded into this one. It looks and feels really weird.



The final wonky technical issue is the CGI, though I'm not going to harp too much on it because it's not used that much and 90s CG just wasn't up to modern standards yet.



Summary: Cube is an engaging, well-crafted thriller that could've been a stone cold classic if it had some kinks ironed out. However, what it does right makes it worth at least one watch.