You know what the Maze Runner reminded me of with its premise of
strangers waking up in a deadly maze with no idea how they got there,
forced to work together to escape? The Cube, that nearly
forgotten cult classic that is nearly twenty years old already. How
forgotten is it? So lost to the sands of time that I forget to
mention it when doing my Saw reviews, since the franchises had a lot
in common... well, at least in the beginning.
Co-written and directed by the
excellent Vincenzo Natali, the Cube was filmed in less than a month
on a micro budget of $350,000 dollars and premiered at the Toronto
International Film Festival on September 9, 1997. It's highly unique
plot attracted a lot of attention, especially with fans of the horror
genre which was floundering at the time. It would go on to spawn a
sequel and a prequel, but neither ever hit the popularity of the film
film and kind of relegated the series into the background as Saw
stepped onto the stage and spent the next decade changing the face of
the genre.
Let's get ready to take a trip down
memory lane as we step into the world of the Cube with
A Ghoul Versus The Cube!
And don't touch ANYTHING without making sure it's safe first!
We open with a bald man waking up in
the eponymous Cube, which is lined with white techno-tiles and has a
hatch on each of its walls in addition to one on the ceiling and
floor. He opens one at random, peering through a short crawlspace to
an identical cube room, only this one is blue. He tries the floor
hatch next, finding himself looking down at a red room. He opens
another wall hatch, this one showing an orange room. He enters it
and almost immediately is sliced to pieces by a giant grate of razor
wire, the camera showing us the name “Alderson” on his clothes as
he falls apart.
We cut to another cube, where a
bloodied man crawls out of a hatch into the room which has an
unconscious man lying on the floor. He wakes him up, but before they
get a chance to speak a woman enters the room from a wall hatch.
They're soon joined by another man and a woman, and it looks like we
have ourselves a full side for a Cube Survival Team! Let's meet the
players:
- Quentin, played by Maurice Dean Wint. He's been acting steadily since 1987, as well as doing a fair amount of voice over work for video games. The Cube is easily his largest starring role.
- Worth, played by David Hewlett. Another actor with a large filmography of bit parts, he's high school friends with Natali and has acted in many of his films.
- Leaven, played by Nicole de Boer. Easily the biggest star in this thing, she's best known for her role of Erzi Dax in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
- Holloway, played by Nicky Guadagni. Many small roles in her career, she was in the film adaption of Silent Hill as “Distressed Woman”.
- Rennes, played by Wayne Robson. The oldest of the group, he has over 150 roles in his forty plus years of acting. Keep an eye out for him in my upcoming Wrong Turn and Incredible Hulk reviews, they're going to be fun!
Rennes is all action, opening a hatch
and throwing one of his boots in to reveal the room is laced with
flamethrowers. Quentin is our voice of reason because he's a police
officer, tries to get everyone to calm down by asking if they
remember how they got there. No one remembers, but all realized they
were kidnapped at night time. They agree to try to escape the Cube
together by going in a straight line, Rennes testing the rooms with
his boot to see if they're trapped or not. As they travel, Leaven
notices a series of numbers carved into a tiny plate in one of the
crawl spaces.
Worth speculates they're serial
numbers, meaning there could be MILLIONS of cubes in the complex.
Holloway, who is a doctor, says if that's true they have less than
three days to escape before they succumb to dehydration and/or
starvation. Real ray of sunshine, this one. Quentin begins to
wonder how Rennes is such an expert at attempt escape before he
realizes he's an infamous criminal nicknamed “the Wren” who has
flown the coup on seven previous occasions. This is also a good time
to point out how every character in the movie is named after a real
life prison, from San Quentin to Leavenworth to the Holloway Women's
Prison in the United Kingdom. Cute detail.
Rennes gives everyone a quick pep talk
about how they need to ONLY focus on the task at hand, the key is to
save themselves from themselves. I like this guy! Too bad the very
next scene he enters a cube that sprays acid on him and MELTS HIS
FUCKING FACE OFF! Everyone despairs some more until Leaven, a
mathematician in school, examines the serial numbers further and
concludes that the ones with prime numbers indicate rooms that are
lethal. This leads to a montage of our little group traveling from
cube to cube while Leaven crunches numbers in her head, as we see
Holloway is starting to crack under the pressure.
Things grind to a halt when they enter
a cube that is trapped on all sides, with the exception of the
ceiling. Quentin climbs up to read the numbers to Leaven, opening
the hatch to reveal a man on the other side that drops into the room.
He casually looks around, announces the room is green, and begins to
beat his head against the wall. Holloway says he's autistic, trying
to reason with him as all he wants to do is go back to the blue room.
She reads the name Kazan off his uniform, which is the name of a
Russian prison.
They continue on until Quentin enters a
room Leaven declared was safe, only to have a razor wire trap spring
up around him. He jumps out in time, but sustains a nasty wound on
his leg. He begins to argue with Worth, who has done fuck all the
entire movie except be as unhelpful as possible. Worth slips and
says there is no way out of the cube, revealing he helped to design
the outer shell. He was contracted by strangers to help draft up
blueprints for the complex, dealing with them over the phone and
never meeting with them. His belief is the original intention for
the cube has long since been forgotten, and people are being put in
it just for it to be used. Um... okay?
Leaven quizzes Worth about the size of
his plans, figuring out the serial numbers actually function as
coordinates for their location within the structure. They make their
way to the edge, finding their next obstacle in a blue room full of
sound activated spikes. They QUIETLY sneak their way through the
room in a very tense scene, Kazan almost getting Quentin killed by
making a noise. Quentin turns on him but Holloway stops him, getting
smacked across her face for doing so. Well, this is just going
GREAT. Worth opens the next hatch to reveal the outside of the cube,
which is a dark space with endless rows of other hatches. They make
a giant rope out of their jackets and pants so Holloway can go
searching for the exit, but finds nothing.
She slips and begins to fall, Quentin
rushing to the edge of the hatch to grab her. They smile at each
other, Holloway's face quickly turning to shock as he begins to scowl
at her. He lets go of her hand, dropping her to her death. He
crawls back inside the cube and puts on his best sad face, no one
else aware he intentionally let go of her. With everyone exhausted
both physically and mentally, they decide to take a nap. Quentin
wakes up early and carries Leaven to another cube, telling her the
others are dead weight.
Quentin then goes full on creeper,
ranting about how they're the perfect match while he touches her in a
most inappropriate fashion. She runs away from him, Worth and Kazan
entering the cube to turn the tables on him after he says he let
Holloway die. Quentin responds by SAVAGELY beating Worth and
throwing him down the floor hatch, surprised when Worth begins to
laugh. They crawl down to see what he's laughing at, discovering
they're back in the cube with Rennes' body. Quentin sinks to the
floor and begins to cry at the reveal that they've been going in
circles, but Worth says that's impossible because they would have hit
the edge before.
He posits the cubes THEMSELVES have
been moving, which explains a mechanical sound they've been hearing
from time to time. This gives Leaven the proverbial light bulb over
her head as she begins reeling off all kinds of tech talk, concluding
she knows exactly where the exit is. There's a catch though, she
can't crunch the numbers to figure out where the traps are because
they're way too big and she's lacking a calculator. Good thing they
just happen to have a resident Rain Man handy, who is able to do it
in his head because we ALL knew that was coming. Using him as a
guide they press on, Worth getting his revenge on Quentin by dropping
him down a floor hatch and knocking him out.
The three press on, making it to a cube
that Leaven announces will take them to the exit the next time it
moves. They wait in anticipation as it does, Kazan opening the hatch
to flood the room with a blinding light. But instead of entering it
like they should, they take the time to... sit down and talk?! Oh
come the fuck on! And look, there's Quentin who teleports into the
room and stabs Leaven through the chest with a spike. You can't say
she didn't have that one coming. He stabs worth as well, going after
Kazan who jumps into the light. Quentin grabs him but is in turn
grabbed by Worth, who holds him in place as the room moves and rips
him in half. The final shot is Kazan walking into the light, because
you knew DAMN WELL the movie was going to end like that.
Cue the credits.
This one hasn't aged as well as I'd
hoped. It still has off the charts tension and some BRILLIANT
cinematography that creates an oppressive and claustrophobic
atmosphere, highlighted by the wise decision to keep the cameras very
close to the actors to make every scene feel cramped and
uncomfortable. And I have no problems with the total lack of answers
or story, it was never meant to be that kind of movie, so we're all
good there.
The most glaring problem is the acting,
or rather, the LACK of acting. The actors are outright atrocious
here, deteriorating into borderline cartoon characters by the end
when they confuse acting with shouting. Holloway's actress deserves
to be singled out here, because WOW she was cringe worthy in this
one. Quentin's transformation into Every Psycho Ever wasn't handled
believably either, he just dropped into the realm of maniacal madman
WAY too abruptly.
In a film with nothing else to drive
the story besides the characters, you really want interesting
characters that you can get behind and root for. The Cube
gave us none of these, instead substituting a cast of disposable and
shrill people you really didn't mind dying. Even the largely
sympathetic Leaven was rendered bland thanks to a very dull
performance by Nicole de Boer where her entire style was “based on
furrow her brow at numbers in-between calling Quentin names”.
It also doesn't help we've seen this
type of story a billion times over, as this formula has been copied
time and time again across the horror and thriller genres. It's the
mark of a good movie that inspires endless clones is to still remain
fresh and memorable years later, COUGH COUGH John Carpenter's
Halloween COUGH COUGH, the Cube fails to rise to that
level. It's still a very compelling movie thanks to its concept and
camera work, but doesn't have the performances that it needed to
truly make it an all time classic. Moderate recommendation here for
fans of something original, although I'll give it much higher marks
if you're really into math because how often do you see a horror
thriller where advanced mathematics figure prominently into the plot?
Let's see how the sequel fares...
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