A wonderful little film that is both intelligent and entertaining

Rating: 8/10 (15 January 2014)

Considering this was filmed in one location and also considering there were no major stars in this film, I thought it was a fantastic film which threw you into the plot pretty much straight away and never slowed down during the 90 minute running time.
The film focuses on 7 strangers who end up trapped in a giant maze for unknown reasons. They find that they must work as a team to try and figure out how to get out of the maze. Of course, it isn't as straight forward as it first seems as there are thousands of rooms and when the team discover that some rooms are booby trapped, the task of getting out proves to be far more difficult than they ever could have imagined.
The 7 protagonists are Leaven (mathematical whizz kid), Quentin (a police officer and self appointed leader), Worth (the man responsible for designing the outside of the cube, but has no knowledge of the inside of the cube) Kazan (a man who is mentally handicapped and also suffering from severe autism - he can work out astronomical sums in his head and is a very similar character to Raymond Babbitt who Dustin Hoffman portrayed in 'Rain Man') Holloway (a doctor) Rennes (a prison escapee) and Alderson (gets killed off in the first 2 minutes - no background info).
The main strengths in this film arise from the characters themselves - right from the start there is an immediate sense of paranoia. None of the characters trust each other and you're never quite sure whether all of the characters are genuine or whether certain characters are 'traps' - this is what hooks you in. The very fact that you are never sure is what makes the film interesting and it ultimately makes the characters interesting as well. Although, there are no particularly 'big name' stars in here I felt that all the actors gave believable performances (particular praise should go to Miller in the role of the mentally handicapped/autistic character of Kazan). It's not easy to pull off this type of role convincingly, but I felt that Miller was right on the money and gave a truly brilliant performance.
It's quite clear after watching Cube where Wan & Whannell got some of their influence when making the first Saw film - the booby traps, working out puzzles, strangers being trapped in a room together. Both films share similar themes and both of these films are intelligent and exciting.
Whilst this film has many strengths and is both intelligent and engaging, there was one major problem; Why were these particular protagonists left in the Cube together?. It's a question that the protagonists ask each other at the start which we never get an answer to. I got subtle hints that some characters were maybe put in there due to areas of expertise (prison escape and mathematical skills) and other characters were placed in there as punishment (such as Quentin with his treatment of his wife and neglecting his kids). But by who and why? We're never given an explanation and that came as a big disappointment as I felt that there was no closure at the end of the film.
Despite this gripe, this was a very impressive film. The acting was great, the direction was solid and all of the characters were interesting. The script (for the most part) was intelligent and the film is tense and engaging. It's a solid film that is definitely worth watching.