Caught in a strange maze

Rating: 7/10 (29 June 2015)

This Canadian horror movie opens with a man in a strange room; before we can learn anything about him he is literally sliced and diced in a wire trap. We then get introduced our potential protagonists; Quinten, Leven, Worth, Holloway and Rennes; most of them awaken in a similar room and they are soon joined by Rennes; he has obviously been there longer and explains what he knows to them and us. They are in what appears to be a giant maze made of interconnecting rooms, some of which are booby-trapped. He believes he has found a way to detect the traps; throwing a boot into the room sets of the sensors that trigger the traps. Unfortunately for him not all the sensors are the same and he is soon killed leaving the others to figure out a way to identify the trapped rooms. Leven believes that they are indicated by the code numbers on the entrance hatches to each room; of course it isn't quite as obvious as it first appears. As they travel through the rooms, tempers fray and they learn more about each other and the structure they are caught in; one of them designed the outer casing, for reasons he didn't know, so they know it is a cube. They also meet another person, the autistic Kazan. As tensions rise it becomes clear that it isn't only the traps they have to worry about; one of them will do anything to make sure they get out, including murder.
The strength of this film is that we know so little about why these people have been placed in this strange maze and nothing about why it was built in the first place. It becomes apparent that each of them has skills that could prove useful; but why them and not someone with similar skills isn't answered. It is this that makes the set up creepy; if we knew who built the cube or why it wouldn't be as effective; all we need to know is that somebody had it built and now these people are caught in it. The cast of less well-known actors does a solid enough job portraying the varied reactions of their characters to the situation they are in. The use of different colours for the rooms nicely creates the idea that they really are in a huge maze of room rather than filming in a single room where the colours could be changed. The opening scene brilliantly grabs our attention and tells us just how dangerous the place is and the tension is maintained nicely almost until the end; then things get a bit too melodramatic as it becomes clear that one of them is very dangerous we even get the cliché of the bad guy, who we thought had been lost or killed, appearing again at the last moment to attack the survivors just as they are about to escape rather than getting out of the cube with them. Overall an enjoyable and creative horror film let down by the ending.