Tension squared.

Rating: 8/10 (17 May 2019)

Ignoring the highly unlikely probability of six people placed in separate cubes somehow safely converging, despite there being countless possible routes for them to take (with many booby trapped rooms along the way), the script for Cube is taut, smartly-written and engaging, primarily a well-observed study of human nature, but also an original little sci-fi thriller, the premise of which predates the similarly themed Saw movies by quite a few years.
Not knowing how they got there, the film's six disparate characters (a schoolgirl, a doctor, a criminal, a mentally disabled man, a cop and an architect) try to find a way out of their unusual predicament, but as time goes by, nerves begin to fray and tempers flare, resulting in a fight for survival. Decent performances from the minimal cast help the film to hold one's attention, even when the focus shifts from creative death scenes (cheese wire and acid traps result in some neat gore) to more psychological horror.
I can understand how the ambiguous ending of the film might be deemed a disappointment by some, but I like how the nature and purpose of the cube remains a mystery.
7.5/10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.