A concept without a purpose and annoying characters

Rating: 4/10 (2 April 2013)

I recently revisited the "Cube" movie after seeing it once when it came out, and it holds up in some ways, but mostly it had a lot of annoying parts that I had forgotten about. The Cube concept is simple: various people wake up inside the Cube, a 14x14x14 enclosure with various rooms which might lead to a way out. Each room is designed with doors on the walls, a door in the ceiling, and one in the floor. Aside from different colors, the rooms each have a number-marker on them, and they can either contain traps for unsuspecting travelers or are safe-rooms, allowing visitors to pass through them. We get to understand how these people in the film get from room to room by taking a look at their individual characteristics and professions.
I love the concept of the Cube. Waking up inside a potential death-trap is frightening and is a concept used in the "Saw" series multiple times years later. Some of the traps are easily avoidable, as shown when one character slips out from being ensnared (and one unlucky guy gets taken out by the easiest trap to avoid), and others are extremely nasty (a whole room of giant spikes, anyone?). The Cube looks interesting, and the CG added to some of the scenes is simple but effective in showing the perilous traps in some of the rooms. Film buffs will notice that it's just one room being shot time and time again, but it feels like the characters are traveling throughout this larger place, so the effect worked on me.
The characters got very annoying very quickly, and by the halfway point through the movie, I wanted them all to die, except for the student in the film, who was the only one not whining or being a complete jerk to any of the others. The actors were OK, but the believability of some of them were spotty, especially the actor who portrayed Quentin who has some severe mood changes that come out of nowhere and requires a pretty good actor to ebb and flow with these changes in subtle ways instead of ham-fisted deliveries and heartless, murderous changes in mood as he had. By the end, you feel somewhat happy for those who made it, but mostly, I was disappointed.
The music was sparse, and the one main song that played during lulls in the story was a simple, "Friday the 13th"-ripoff, horror song using echoing voices, a screeching sample, and a few synth plunks making for an abstract and forgettable song. The sound effects, however, were very satisfying and were required to show the heaviness of the doors and the sharp, dangerous quality of the traps.
After viewing this, the logic behind the story doesn't work for me. There are supposed to be 17,576 rooms in this Cube, so how did they all just happen to meet each other after the first day being there? I hated that everyone in the party blindly followed the math student from room to room like she knew what she was doing after seeing numbers on the doors for about 2 minutes. She basically quoted something out of a calculus book to confuse the audience into saying "Sure, fine, whatever. Follow her." Oh, and NOTHING IS ANSWERED by the end. Where is the Cube? Who or what is it made by? Why are these people selected to be here? If it were made by blind-architects who didn't care about humans being harmed in various rooms, are they the creators of it with only one guy creating the shell that wasn't related to the rest of the architect- crew?
It's a confusing watch for those who care about the story. If you watch it for sci-fi elements alone and the concept of the Cube, you'll get into it on suspense and design alone, but otherwise, there are a lot of unanswered questions that leave you wanting to understand more. Maybe answer why these individuals were selected, much like the victims in "Saw" are selected. I probably won't get around to watching this again anytime soon. Disappointed.