It's All In The Atmosphere or: Nihilism, Anyone?

Rating: 7/10 (11 June 1999)

Hmmm. Very interesting little movie, this. The idea-put a few strangers in a life-or-death situation and see how they cope-is as old as...well, I don't know, but it's a pretty old idea. Some of the acting is good, some of it isn't. The much-maligned ending was the best part, I thought. The entire meaning of the movie was in that last three or so minutes, and the music is incredibly creepy. What's remarkable about this movie is the feelings it provokes. I was terrified. It indulges in a fair amount of gore and violence, but that's not what was scary. It's nihilism was what had been hiding under my covers, and *I'm* very understanding of the nihilistic viewpoint, even if I don't necessarily consider myself to be one.
"Cube" has its flaws, but lack of atmosphere and the ability to provoke aren't among them. I had chills for days after I saw it. (Incidentally, the math does hypothetically work. The guys who made it went to their math professor, who has a Ph.D. in mathematics, and asked him to come up with a number system that would do all the things they needed it to do for the movie. He came up with a system that did all that for a "cube" that would be 25 X 25 rooms, but said that with the effort needed to progressively figure out if it would work for a cube the size of the one in the movie, he would be able to get another Ph.D. in math.)