Effective and compelling, despite a flawed script

Rating: 7/10 (29 March 2019)

A strange, satisfying but far from flawless low-budget science-fiction horror drama. A group of strangers wake up to find themselves in a huge cube consisting of equal-sized rooms, some of which contain fatal traps. They don't know each other, why they're there, where they are or how to get out. As the film passes, the group are inevitably picked off and we learn more of who they are. There's much to be commended, especially in an era of cinema replete with prequels, cinematic universes, backstory and origin stories where everything that can be explained is explained. Though this film has a (kind of) tidy ending, there's much we don't know; a lot is left to our imagination, for us to fill in the blanks - or to leave them blank if we want to. Is the film about conspiracy theories; a Lord of the Flies style experiment in human savagery; an exercise in sadistic ways of dying? Other things? All of them? None of them? That's the appeal and potential frustration of the film. Despite a script that is at times badly flawed and some very limited performances, this is a film that works because of what it doesn't tell us, making the best of a clearly limited budget. Sometimes less really is more.