CUBE

The movie CUBE unfolds with such promise. Seven people wake up and find themselves trapped in a set of mysterious cubes within a cube. The labyrinthine maze allegedly holds clues to a greater mystery, but the real mystery is how Canadian director Vincenzo Natali could steer such a great premise down a dark and disappointing path. One might even say that CUBE geometrically misses the mark as a psychological thriller. For instance, some of the adjacent rooms within the cube are booby-trapped for no other reason than to add gratuitous gore to this Twilight Zone premise.

CUBE is rated R for explicit language and violence. The plot is supposed to be an allegory to the trappings of life, with the usual message that humans are their own worst enemy. Regrettably, CUBE offers no new insights or perspectives about human nature and misses a terrific opportunity to highlight the courage and nobility of the human struggle. Instead, the audience is left as bewildered as the movie’s characters and betrayed by this amateurish attempt at science fiction which falls significantly short of the sci-fi genre.

The movie’s characters, critical to this “trapped in an elevator” scenario, are merely objects in the hands of the director. Far better movies with this theme come to mind, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT or Agatha Christie’s TEN LITTLE INDIANS, but CUBE doesn’t even come close to these. In this movie, the selected participants are supposed to be “average” people: a policeman, an escape artist, a doctor, a student, and a few others who may or may not play a role in the group’s escape. Most of these characters are so self-absorbed and unbelievable that we do not care if they ever escape.

This low-budget movie was shot in 20 days in a Toronto warehouse, and it shows. The strained acting, the wobbly plastic doors that are supposed to be solid metal and the awkward soundtrack only distract the viewer determined to follow the plot’s pointless path. (Several wise patrons gave up early on and walked out of the theater.) CUBE looks like a freshman’s student movie, using only the barest set designs and the cheapest-looking special effects.

In the hands of a capable director, this bare-bones approach could have been used to intensify the message of the movie and focus on the actors’ experiences and decisions along their journey. However, this director must have been shouting “More blood!” to his crews, in hopes that the excessive and senseless violence might mask the fact that he had nothing to say.

CUBE tries to horrify the audience with the threat of fiendish traps that mutilate the human body through dissection, burning, acid spraying, etc, but this twisted (not twisting) plot device is neither diabolical nor clever and viewers will only be sickened by it. At a key point in the movie, one of the characters draws a conclusion about the Cube and shouts to the others, “It has no purpose!” The audience should have realized right there that he must have been talking about the movie.