Movie: Cube

Cube is a movie full of originality, suspense and twists.

Cube, an original sci-fi mystery.

The premise behind Cube is an original one - a group of strangers wake up inside a series of interconnected cubes, some of which are booby trapped, and they must work together to find a way out.  Each of the group has their own unique skills which are useful to their escape attempt, with the group initially comprising a doctor, a policeman, an escaped prisoner, a school girl, and a mysterious no-hoper.  As well as all coming from different professions or backgrounds, there are also a few varied attitudes and outlooks on life found within the group.

After a fairly gruesome start Cube quickly has you asking a lot of questions and within only a few minutes you’re already well and truly sucked into this movie.  It can be quite grisly at times, but that only adds to the suspense as you nervously wonder on the fate of the characters.  For the majority of the movie you’re on edge and unable to relax, and like all good suspense movies it is the anticipation of a potential shocking event which has you gripped, rather than such events frequently occurring.

And again like all good suspense movies, when the gruesome moments do occur, they tend to take place just when you’re starting to relax and therefore least expecting it.

Once they come to terms with their strange circumstances, the prisoners quickly attempt to analyse the situation in an attempt to determine how to escape from the maze of cubes, but as well as searching for an escape route they also search for answers regarding their current situation.  Why have they been placed in the maze?  What does their imprisoner want from them?  What is the reasoning behind it all?

Certain clues lead them to believe that the purpose for their imprisonment is far from random, and rather that it has all been carefully planned out to the tiniest detail.  If they can decipher the logic behind this plan then maybe it can help them in their escape.  It’s fair to say that although this movie involves a lot of mystery, rather than being a ‘whodunnit,’ it’s more of a ‘whatsgoingon?’

The script and plot are well-judged, so that just when things seem to be approaching some sort of predictability, more surprises arrive.  The movie never lets you relax for very long, and you totally share in the characters’ puzzlement and sense of tension.

As you can imagine when you’re thrown together with a bunch of strangers in a sick mechanical game of life or death, tempers eventually begin to fray and so it becomes a battle to stay in control of their emotions as much as a battle to work out how to escape the maze.  And as you can probably guess, when the answers start to arrive they aren’t presented all in one go but rather little by little and detail by detail.

As the action progresses the dynamic of the group changes quite a bit, as does their optimism and confidence of escape.  You’re also forced to reassess your opinion of certain characters as you discover that not everyone is being entirely open and honest about how much they know.

Whether you enjoy the closing sequence will depend on whether you prefer endings which wrap everything neatly up or whether you prefer an ending which leaves you with more unanswered questions.  Although the finale to Cube wasn’t the type of conclusion which I generally prefer, it was nevertheless a dramatic ending and fitted well with the overall unease which you feel while watching the rest of the movie so it worked well within the context of the movie as a whole.

Cube is a movie which perhaps won’t appeal to every audience and if you were being harsh then it does have a few weaknesses, but its strengths far outweigh any criticisms.  The originality of the plot make it hard to exactly pin-point what specific genre of movie this falls under, but as a broad guideline if you fancy a sci-fi mystery somewhat different from your usual movie entertainment, full of suspense and twists, and one which will have you intrigued and asking questions, then Cube is a movie which is definitely worth a viewing.

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