Cube: Full of Holes

Rating: 4/10 (2 April 2010)

A low budget Canadian psychological thriller, Cube has garnered a cult following and something of a legacy in popular culture. After a long time, I finally got around to seeing this interesting looking film today.
Deeply mysterious, Cube chronicles the story of seven different people as they travel through an apparently endless system of interlinked cube structures with six doors each to adjacent cubes. Relying on each others' individual characteristics and skills to get them through, they desperately attempt to escape their geometric hell.
With a single claustrophobic set used for shooting , one undeniable thing about Cube is the originality of its premise. Reworking the concept of the maze thriller in all sorts of new dimensions, it brings an interesting newness to the subgenre. The potential presented in the early scenes of the film is large; the opening scene immensely entertaining and indicative of good things to come from the original and intriguing concept. The implementation of this idea is, however, cripplingly flawed. Suffering painfully all the faults of clunky and unrealistic dialogue, the film does little to improve it with some substandard performances. The characters, though mildly interesting, seem to react in entirely absurd ways at times, doing much to detract from the audience sympathy vote: Kazan, an autistic character, is often just offensively portrayed; Leaven, the "math whiz", takes her time in trying to decide if multiples of 5 and 2 are prime numbers. The film is full of holes and massive flaws, turning it from a film of considerable potential to, at times, an infuriatingly contrived work. All that aside, it is actually quite enjoyable once you accept and expect its regular absurdity. Plot twists are painfully obvious, but the path to them is at least a fun one to tread, some of the tensions rising between characters interesting, if not effective or believable. Though it does little to establish itself as a particularly good movie, it's at least not a terrible one.
With flaws aplenty, many of them just silly and stupid, Cube falls flat on its face more than once, suffering regularly from its less than convincing dialogue and unintentionally funny developments. Entertaining all the same, it's certainly original.