Review of Cube (1998) by Steph S — 18 Dec 2012

"Cube" has an interesting premises and despite being a low budget horror film it's well made but it suffers from bad dialogue and the ending doesn't live up to the strong beginning and middle.

The film is well shot and made in a way that you won't be questioning the premise. Normally a slew of characters being trapped in an elaborate hi-tech maze would be ridiculous but the film cleverly never really gives us a date on when the film is happening, where it is happening and barely explains how, which means this movie could be happening in the present or in a distant future in a far-away galaxy for all we know.

When it comes to the human characters though, many of them often act stupidly (one second they're carefully making sure rooms are safe, the next they're just setting themselves up for a huge accident) and the dialogue is clunky.

There is one character the "villain" that comes not necessarily out of nowhere but changes so dramatically and so quickly that it's hard to buy. The gore and violence is actually pretty tame for this genre of film so if you're looking for violent, bloody and creative deaths they aren't really the focus of the film, it's more about the paranoia of being stuck in a maze with people you're never sure if you can trust.

There's enough good things in "Cube" for it to be worth you time, even if it doesn't really live up to its potential as a paranoid horror and won't blow you away. (VHS, December 15, 2012).