Cube (film)

For the 1969 film by Jim Henson, see The Cube (1969 film). For other uses, see Cube.

Cube
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Vincenzo Natali
Produced by	Mehra Meh Betty Orr Colin Brunton
Written by	André Bijelic Graeme Manson Vincenzo Natali
Starring	Maurice Dean Wint Nicole de Boer Nicky Guadagni David Hewlett Andrew Miller
Music by	Mark Korven
Cinematography	Derek Rogers
Editing by	John Sanders
Studio	Viacom Canada Téléfilm Canada Ontario Film Development Corporation Odeon Films The Harold Greenberg Fund The Feature Film Project Cube Libre
Distributed by	Cineplex-Odeon Films (Canada) Trimark Pictures (United States)
Release date(s)	September 9, 1997 (Canada) January 16, 1998 (Sundance Film Festival) September 11, 1998 (United States)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	Canada
Language	English French

Cube is a 1997 Canadian science fiction psychological thriller/horror film directed by Vincenzo Natali. The film was a successful product of the Canadian Film Centre's First Feature Project.

Much of the film's appeal lies in its surreal, Kafkaesque settings; no extensive attempt is made to explain what the cube is that the characters are confined in, why it is created, or how the people were selected to be put inside there. Although the world "outside" is referred to, it is presented in an extremely abstract fashion, either a dark void or a bright white light.

Plot

A man named Alderson (Julian Richings) wakes up in a cubical room with a hatch door in the center of every wall, the floor, and the ceiling. The adjoining rooms are identical to this one except for the color of the walls. As he explores some of them, he is suddenly cut to pieces by a razor-sharp metal grate that swings down from the ceiling.

In another room, Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), Worth (David Hewlett), Holloway (Nicky Guadagni), Rennes (Wayne Robson), and Leaven (Nicole deBoer) meet. None of them know where they are, how they got there, or why they are there, so they decide to try to find a way out together. Rennes has already discovered that some rooms contain traps. Assuming that they are triggered by motion detectors, he tests each room by throwing a boot into it first. As the group moves along, Leaven notices numbers inscribed in the hatchways between rooms, and Rennes dies from an acid spray to his face - a trap that had not been set off by the boot. The others realize that they must find a better way to test the rooms.

Quentin believes that each of them has a purpose to fulill within the Cube: he is a police officer, Leaven a mathematics student, Holloway a doctor. Worth, the most pessimistic of the group, is reluctant to talk about his background. Leaven theorizes that any room marked with a prime number is a trap. They soon find another person in the Cube, a mentally challenged man named Kazan (Andrew Miller), and Holloway insists that they bring him along.

Quentin enters a room without prime numbers but is injured in its razor-wire trap, disproving Leaven's theory. Tensions rise within the group, with Quentin becoming annoyed by Holloway's paranoia, Kazan's mental state, and Worth's reticence. Worth inadvertently reveals that he helped to design the Cube's outer shell, but insists that he knows nothing beyond the technical details of the project. His information allows Leaven to determine that the numbers could indicate the Cartesian coordinates of the rooms. The group starts moving toward the nearest edge.

They arrive at an edge room and find a gap between it and the outer shell. Holloway swings out to investigate, using a rope made of their clothes, but nearly falls when the Cube vibrates; Quentin catches her, then drops her to her death, telling the others that she slipped. As they rest, Quentin tries to persuade Leaven to come with him instead of the others. Worth and Kazan stop Quentin, who beats Worth and then throws him through the floor hatch. Rennes' body is down here, making them believe they have been going in circles, but Leaven and Worth quickly realize that the rooms have been shifting within the Cube - the source of the vibrations they have been feeling.

Leaven deduces that rooms marked with powers of prime numbers are traps, and turns to Kazan - an autistic savant who can quickly do prime factorizations - to guide them. In addition, Leaven and Worth realize that there must be a "bridge" room that connects to the outer shell, and that the numbers indicate the positions that each room will reach as it cycles through the Cube. The room that connects to the bridge proves to be the one in which everyone but Kazan and Alderson first met.

Worth incapacitates Quentin, who has now gone completely insane, buying time for himself, Leaven, and Kazan to reach the bridge. As Worth tells Leaven of his decision not to leave, since he has nothing to live for, Quentin returns and fatally stabs them both with a door handle. With the last of his strength, Worth drags Quentin back from Kazan so that he is crushed to death in the hatchway when the rooms shift next. Kazan, the only survivor, slowly exits into the bright light outside the Cube.

Cast

• Nicole de Boer as Joan Leaven, a girl who has expert mathematical skills that aid the group.
• Maurice Dean Wint as Quentin. He claims to be a police officer and is strong and level-headed. He takes on most of the dangerous tasks and claims to look for "practical solutions".
• David Hewlett as David Worth. He maintains a doomed outlook throughout the first part of the film, and mocks Quentin's attempts at escape.
• Nicky Guadagni as Dr. Helen Holloway, a free clinic doctor. She is shown at the start to be bitter, paranoid, and melodramatic. She spouts conspiracy theories and believes that the government is responsible for the Cube.
• Andrew Miller as Kazan, an autistic man with the ability to rapidly and accurately perform prime number calculations.
• Wayne Robson as Rennes, also known as "The Wren". He first appears to the group as the most knowledgeable of their surroundings, and the reluctant leader. He was an escape artist who had escaped from seven major prisons.
• Julian Richings as Alderson, a fellow Cube prisoner who never meets the rest of the group.

Character names

All the characters are named after prisons. Quentin is named after San Quentin State Prison in California, Holloway is named after the Holloway Prison in London, Kazan is named after the prison in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia, Rennes is named after a prison in Rennes, Brittany, France, Alderson is named after the prison in Alderson, West Virginia, and Leaven and Worth are named after the prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Production

After writing Cube, Vincenzo Natali developed and filmed a short entitled Elevated. The short was set in an elevator and was intended to give investors an idea of how Cube would hypothetically look and come across. It eventually got the feature financed. Cube was shot on a Toronto soundstage.

Only one cube, measuring 14 by 14 by 14 feet, was actually built, with only one working door that could actually support the weight of the actors. The colour of the room was changed by sliding panels. Since this task was a time-consuming procedure, the movie was not shot in sequence; all shots taking place in rooms of a specific colour were shot one at a time. It was intended that there would be six different colours of rooms to match the recurring theme of six throughout the movie; five sets of gel panels plus pure white. However, the budget did not stretch to the sixth gel panel and so there are only five different room colours in the movie. Another partial cube was made for shots requiring the point of view of standing in one room looking into another.

An episode of the original The Twilight Zone television series, "Five Characters in Search of an Exit", was reportedly an inspiration for the movie.

Reception

Cube received mixed to positive reviews from critics such as the New York Times, earning an approval rating of 59% on Rotten Tomatoes. Movie critics for Electric Sheep magazine, AMC's Filmcritic.com, and Empire Online gave the film positive reviews, while critics for Nitrate Online and the San Francisco Chronicle panned the film.Bloody Disgusting gave the movie a positive review, writing "Shoddy acting and a semi-weak script can't hold this movie back. It's simply too good a premise and too well-directed to let minor hindrances derail its creepy premise." Slant Online panned the film, saying "like lab rats futilely running on their treadmill, Cube eventually winds up going nowhere fast."

Sequels

Main article: Cube (film series)

Cube is followed by the sequel Cube 2: Hypercube (2003) and the prequel Cube Zero (2004).

External links

• Cube at the Internet Movie Database
• Cube at AllRovi
• Cube at Rotten Tomatoes
• Cube at the Canadian Film Centre website.