Sub standard horror flick.

Rating: 4/10 (15 December 2004)

People have a very bad habit of interpreting this as a 'philosophical film'. It's not. You want a philosophical film, go watch Solaris. It's a mystery to me why this film is so universally loved. The concept is fantastic, I admit but the execution is pretty lousy. The acting is pretty solid I suppose but considering the characters are all caricatures that really isn't saying much. People try to excuse the acting by saying that this movie is a critique of human society. That makes me curious to what sort of society these people live in. We live in a peaceful society where death doesn't wait round every corner. Not really like Cube then. The script needed a lot of work as well; whilst the first half of the film is actually quite well written, when things start to go wrong it falls apart. Especially the ending.
**SPOILER**
The cop coming back to kill those last two characters was, lets face it, because they couldn't think of another way to get rid of them. And the ending itself was another cop out. 'existentialist?' American Beauty is existentialist. Fear X is existentialist. This is just a mess.
**SPOILER END**
Cool traps and situations do not a film make. There is so much missing from this film that I really cannot find much to recommend it. And, after the whole experience, nothing is resolved, nothing is discussed, just a bunch of immature conspiracy theories that are supposed to make people think 'yes, they're being clever by not explaining things' whereas they are actually making extremely generalized statements and trying to pass it off as philosophy and social analysis.