Cinema without the clutter

Rating: 8/10 (6 December 2000)

A beautiful exercise in cinematic restraints, both unavoidable (The film has a surprisingly low budget) and deliberate (The director famously chose to shoot using only one set). Cube is wonderfully refreshing for both sci-fi and cinema fans alike. Like 'The Blair Witch Project', much of the pleasure of 'Cube' derives from it's undeniable originality, meaning it can be appreciated whether or not you enjoy the film on a personal level.
The simplisity of the film is hard to comprehend without actually viewing it. There is one set (Perhaps the films strongest character, seen as the 'villain'), a tiny cast of characters who each have a very specific role to play within the plot structure, and a wafer thin storyline (Six people wake up in a giant maze and attempt to escape, and that's it). There is no true explanation of the Cubes purpose, various theories are suggested by the prisoners, but each is fundamentally flawed. It simply exists to give us an hour and a half of nerve tingling drama, as we quickly realise that the details don't matter, it is simply a study of a group of people in peril and the friction and comradeship that develops therein.
Despite the aforementioned budgetry constraints, the movie contains some amazing visuals, notably the spinning wire trap that the policeman nearly gets caught in, and of course, the jaw dropping opening, where we are introduced to the cube as an unnamed prisoner gets suddenly and spectacularly 'cubed'.
Like the rooms of the cube itself, this is a sparsely decorated, sometimes frightening, but always ingeniously designed piece of science-fiction cinema. Unforgettable.