Thinking person's sci-fi with more ideas than dollars

Rating: 9/10 (29 May 2016)

Here's a rarity : a fresh, clever low-budget movie filmed on peanuts in Canada. Most low budget productions are just full of mindless amateur gore and poor acting skills, but this is something different. The lack of budget is hidden by some clever set-redressing so it looks like the action takes place in a huge area, when in fact it was just one room.
Now I like set-ups like this - anything which differs from the norm intrigues me. CUBE starts off with an eye-opening and surreal moment, where a man is neatly sliced into hundreds of pieces, and then disintegrates. This is a gruesome yet staggeringly artistic image, executed wonderfully and a great attention grabber. Obviously things can only go downhill from there, and soon we're in the familiar territory of a bunch of actors trapped together in an isolated location. For fans of stuff like THE OUTER LIMITS and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, this is a familiar scenario. And, guess what? Each person has to use their own unique skills to help escape. There's a cop; a doctor; a student; a criminal; plus other assorted diverse characters. And from then on, we watch the gradual increase of friction between the people, the running from room to room in the seemingly endless maze, and the nail-biting moments where clever traps need to be negotiated. The best trap is the 'room of silence' one - any sound results in instant death. Classic.
Okay, so the ending may be abrupt and the computer animation may be not entirely convincing, but in the end this film succeeds due to the strength of the acting. Every actor is believable, if not very interesting. It's an actor named Maurice Dean Wint who deserves all of the honours in this film. He's set up as being a straightforward action hero type, taking responsibility for control of the group, but by the end has undergone a mental breakdown which results in him murdering people to try and escape. This breakdown is gradual, and brilliantly acted, playing with the audience's expectations of who this character is.
There is some other trickery involved with the viewer, too. The old standby of killing off a principal character early on (seen from everything from PSYCHO to DEEP BLUE SEA) is used here, to good effect, followed immediately by a gratuitous gore scene where a man's face is eaten away by acid. An arresting sight, I'm sure you'll agree. CUBE is full of confrontation and keeps the viewer interested throughout, making up for some out-of-place, confusing mathematics plus something of a lack of momentum in the final third, where things just don't seem as important or as urgent anymore. Saying that, it's a fine example of a cheaply-produced picture with more ideas than dollars, a rare thing these days, and films like these are just calling out to be embraced.