Awesome sci-fi movie, which ACTUALLY makes you think about society today

Rating: 8/10 (28 August 2001)

Once again, a friend, who has the uncanny ability to pick out good obscure movies, explained "Cube" to me...once he got done, I was so intrigued, I immediately went out to the movie store and rented it.
I would like to call this movie the "Blair Witch" of sci-fi. Made on a wafer-thin budget for this type of movie ($365K Canadian -- approx. $240K US), it manages to tell a good story with unknown actors, and a single cubical set (which I read was one 14'x14' set only made to look like different cubes by changing the colors of the tiles), it is simply amazing. But the real concept behind the story is two-fold. I read a review on another movie site that explained the characters perfectly. The characters represent our society and the cube represents "system", and these characters have one of these qualities: the leader-turn-domineering controller (Quentin); the insider who knows about, but refuses to give up any information about the system (Worth); the paranoid who gets into other peoples' business for their own satisfaction (Holloway); the pushover scholar who easily follows others orders (Leaven); the careless, represented by a mentally challenged character, who knows nothing but could give a crap about the system and never will (Kazan); and the fugitive who wants nothing and will think of nothing but escaping the system with no one's help (the uncredited guy at the beginning, and also Rennes). I think that this explanation says that each group has an ability, but a disability that inevitably counteracts with their ability and makes it that much harder to beat the "system", the cube.
The other concept that this movie toys with is math. Since my favorite subject in school is math, I was interested in how it was incorporated into the movie. With the help of Leaven, mathematics becomes a vital part of the escape. I understood some, but others was too complicated (Cartesian coordinates, powers of primes???), but it made it that much interesting, as well.
After I saw the movie, I heard that a follow-up to this movie was being made as we speak -- Cube 2: Hypercube. It won't be a sequel, yet it will deal with the concept of hypercubes which only exist in the 4th dimension, which is a real theory. That will definitely be a mindboggler...can't wait! Otherwise, as we wait, this movie needs to be publicized, instead of the 90% of the high-budget, starring-famous-actors-who-can-act movies being made today. 9.5/10