← Back to Reviews
in
Cube, 1997
*This review contains a spoiler concerning part of the ending*
The movie sets out by killing a man in a rather grotesque manner. We see an anxious and sweaty man crawl through a door into one of the cubes. The man is clearly panicking and looks like he hasn’t eaten for days. As he places his feet on the floor of the cube a sharp cutting sound emerges, after which we see the man’s body fall apart in pieces. Then the metal net swings back in position. When you’ve seen this you pretty much know what the whole movie is about.
We follow five characters, which, from the beginning, are trapped in a cube. They soon discover that the cube is linked with other cubes on every side, thus giving the impression that they are trapped in a fairly large cube. The movie is basically about these five characters’ escape from this place.
Naturally the movie is very character based. Since the sets and visuals in this film are very alike (only differs with different colors) the excitement has to come from the characters and the traps. Now, these characters are as follows:
We have the cynical cop, Quentin,
the high school math prodigy, Leaven,
the indifferent, tired-of-living architect, Worth,
Holloway the doctor
and finally the autistic Kazan.
It’s interesting to see how the different characters react in this sort of situation. Not to mention the interaction between them. Watching people lose their minds and throw away their values and ethics are always good fun. When combined with creative death traps – doubly so. The characters’ psychological descents are a large part of this movie, and it’s executed with fairly good acting.
This is really what this movie does. It takes these characters, these archetypes, and place them in a life threatening situation where they’re absolutely helpless. They’re not evil or bad people - they’rehuman, like you and I. “They”, the anonymous people behind the cube, have decided that these five people should be put through this, and done so without no obvious reason. It’s utterly and completely pointless. They’re not some masked lunatic with reasons like the victims not enjoying life. They’re invisible throughout the movie, as are the reason for the cube itself. This builds heavy suspense, and I was genuinely frustrated that I wasn’t told what’s outside the damn cube.
This movie was good, but yet I felt like something was missing. Making a decent movie out of virtually one room and some special effects is an impressive achievement. However, the movie had a tendency to become too static, and the mathematical theory behind the cube wasn’t that exciting, to put it nicely.
The actors’ performances were good, though the actor playing Quentin had a little too much crazy eyes going to take him seriously sometimes. The characters lacked depth somehow and seemed shallow, to me. I say this due to the lack of background story, so the characters, as mentioned before, are archetypes and not individual characters with dept, so to speak.
Rent, don’t buy:
*This review contains a spoiler concerning part of the ending*
The movie sets out by killing a man in a rather grotesque manner. We see an anxious and sweaty man crawl through a door into one of the cubes. The man is clearly panicking and looks like he hasn’t eaten for days. As he places his feet on the floor of the cube a sharp cutting sound emerges, after which we see the man’s body fall apart in pieces. Then the metal net swings back in position. When you’ve seen this you pretty much know what the whole movie is about.
We follow five characters, which, from the beginning, are trapped in a cube. They soon discover that the cube is linked with other cubes on every side, thus giving the impression that they are trapped in a fairly large cube. The movie is basically about these five characters’ escape from this place.
Naturally the movie is very character based. Since the sets and visuals in this film are very alike (only differs with different colors) the excitement has to come from the characters and the traps. Now, these characters are as follows:
We have the cynical cop, Quentin,
the high school math prodigy, Leaven,
the indifferent, tired-of-living architect, Worth,
Holloway the doctor
and finally the autistic Kazan.
It’s interesting to see how the different characters react in this sort of situation. Not to mention the interaction between them. Watching people lose their minds and throw away their values and ethics are always good fun. When combined with creative death traps – doubly so. The characters’ psychological descents are a large part of this movie, and it’s executed with fairly good acting.
This is really what this movie does. It takes these characters, these archetypes, and place them in a life threatening situation where they’re absolutely helpless. They’re not evil or bad people - they’rehuman, like you and I. “They”, the anonymous people behind the cube, have decided that these five people should be put through this, and done so without no obvious reason. It’s utterly and completely pointless. They’re not some masked lunatic with reasons like the victims not enjoying life. They’re invisible throughout the movie, as are the reason for the cube itself. This builds heavy suspense, and I was genuinely frustrated that I wasn’t told what’s outside the damn cube.
This movie was good, but yet I felt like something was missing. Making a decent movie out of virtually one room and some special effects is an impressive achievement. However, the movie had a tendency to become too static, and the mathematical theory behind the cube wasn’t that exciting, to put it nicely.
The actors’ performances were good, though the actor playing Quentin had a little too much crazy eyes going to take him seriously sometimes. The characters lacked depth somehow and seemed shallow, to me. I say this due to the lack of background story, so the characters, as mentioned before, are archetypes and not individual characters with dept, so to speak.
Rent, don’t buy: