Interesting, if flawed

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2015)

While not a Kubrickian exploration of the human condition, Cube, a well-structured, suspenseful and legitimately scary thriller can be quite effectively compared to the maze-like halls of the The Shining's Overlook Hotel.
It's not perfect in any way, but if you enjoy a slow-paced horror like The Shining but find it a little complex this works fine. The film's cinematography is as disorienting as Gravity's with clever perspective tricks used to confuse which way is up and down and the use of one single set throughout the film borders on repetition but never quite reaches that extreme, instead finishing at a reasonable time (roughly 90 minutes in) and giving extremely limited glimpses of what lays outside the cube.
The main flaws are macro-elemental, with clichéd writing, stereotyped characters and bland, uninspired performances. The actors are all unknowns and with writing as unfortunately bland as this film offers it's no surprise that their performances suffer also. There were also a couple of annoying plot holes which got strangely ignored, and although it is perhaps suitable to keep these mysteries as mysteries a greater sense of satisfaction at the somewhat unthoughtful ending would be apparent if there were some even subtle hints to what the secrets of the cube were.
This isn't to say that the response isn't as intended - there are some standout sequences such as the incredibly tense scene where all of the characters have to traverse a room with sound-activated traps, and later on in the piece the characters do face some genuinely scary situations, the claustrophobia setting in on the viewers as well.
So if you can put up with some uninspired writing it's not hard to like this film for its achievements.