Review of Cube (1998) by James C — 21 May 2013

Six strangers must band together for survival in a bizarre maze where deadly surprises lurk around every corner.

Here we have a low budget horror / SF movie that explores the ideas of fear of the unknown and paranoia in a story that has no explanation. The plot is very simple, but don't let that fool you, as it is handled incredibly well and even though all the action takes place in one set you get the feeling of the characters moving through like rats caught in a maze. The (small) cast all play their characters incredibly well, and all portray the feelings of paranoia, suspicion and madness to the max, and it is a nice touch that they are all named after prison complexes. The set design is simple as all the action takes place in one cube that is given a different colors to represent movement into different rooms, but one down-side with this is that the viewer does tend to lose interest in the surroundings because they never change. The gore is limited, but when deaths do occur, they are very inventive and even though the CGI is looking a little dated by today's standards, it is well handled. All in all this is a great little movie, with some brilliant Kafkaesque ideas that have inspired later genre films such as Saw, and even though the ending does make the viewer feel "Oh, is that it then?", it is still a riveting watch that stands up to repeated viewing.