Cube Zero
| Cube Zero | |
|---|---|
 Cube Zero movie poster. | |
| Directed by | Ernie Barbarash |
| Written by | Ernie Barbarash (WGA) |
| Produced by | Ronald Kinnoch |
| Starring | Zachary Bennett Stephanie Moore Michael Riley Martin Roach |
| Cinematography | François Dagenais |
| Edited by | Mitch Lackie (as Mitchell Lackie) Mark Sanders |
| Music by | Norman Orenstein |
| Distributed by | Lions Gate Entertainment |
Release date | October 15 2004 USA |
Running time | 97 min. |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | CAD 1,200,000 (estimated) |
Cube Zero is a 2004 Canadian horror movie directed by Ernie Barbarash. It is the third film in the Cube series and the plot is primarily about people trapped in a maze of cube-shaped rooms with some rooms containing deadly traps. The first two movies take place almost entirely within the maze while Cube Zero takes place within and outside the maze.
Plot summary
Cube Zero is a prequel to the original science fiction film Cube. Unlike the other movies in the trilogy, Cube and Hypercube, the story is set from the perspectives of both those trapped in the Cube and of the people monitoring them. The Cube itself is a maze consisting of Shaped Box rooms. Some of the rooms have various traps, including sharp wires, flames, blades, and chemicals. The characters test each room for traps by a method known as "booting," which involves throwing a boot into a trapped room in an attempt to activate any traps.
The film focuses on the genius Cube technician, Eric Wynn, and Cassandra Rains, a woman placed in the Cube whom he finds himself interested in.
The film starts with a man, Ryjkin, trapped in the cube trying to navigate his way out. After a while he reaches a cube where nozzles come out of the walls to spray a liquid on to him. He confirms by the smell and taste that it is only water and finds some relief in his tension, however when he rubs the back of his palm he realizes that his body is disintegrating. Presumably the liquid contains flesh-eating bacteria or fast-acting enzymes. In either case, his body quickly falls apart into a bloody mess, and he dies.
Eric Wynn, a cube technician feels disgusted watching this sitting in an observation room with his (higher ranking) co-worker Dodd. Afterwards we see Eric Wynn simultaneously sketching a portrait of Dodd (in the form of a superhero called Chessman) and conversing and playing chess in his mind with Dodd, who has a chess board in front of him. He defeats Dodd with ease. Eric keeps asking Dodd questions about their missing colleagues, but Dodd suggests, increasingly insistently, that he not ask too many questions or get too involved with the present occupants of the cube.
They get an order from "upstairs" which asks them to record the dream of a subject, who is presently in REM. The subject is Cassandra Rains. In her dream, Wynn sees how she was captured while walking in a pleasant forest with her daughter Anna.
Rains meets the other occupants of the cube who share her plight, two more males and one female. One of the males has a tattoo on his forehead like the soldier that captured her. However, the soldier, like everyone else, has no recollection of his former life.
According to what Wynn knows, everyone in the cube was facing a death sentence once upon a time, and was presented a choice: either to be in the cube with memory wiped out, or to go ahead with the sentence. Only if a person signs the consent form is he or she then placed in the cube. Wynn finds out that Rains has no consent form and argues with Dodd that they should inform the people "upstairs" because this could be a mistrial.
Just when he is about to make a call to the superiors, the phone rings. They are instructed to perform the "exit procedure" for a subject who has reached the end through the cube and is about to meet his final challenge. They find that it is none other than Owen, one of the missing colleagues. In the process of the exit procedure, when asked if he believes in God, he answers no. The answer results in his immediate incineration.
Wynn argues with Dodd over the fate of Owen. After realizing that working in the Cube is inhumane, he decides to enter the cube to save Rains, and helps her party to the exit.
One of the cube's supervisors (called Jax) and two analysts who report to him come to Wynn & Dodd's work stations to handle the situation created by Wynn's decision to help Rains. Despite their efforts to stop them, Wynn and Rains make it to the exit room with the help of Dodd, who sabotages the connection to the control panels servicing the cube, and subsequently pays with his life. The sabotage causes the cube to go into "reset mode", which means that the cube will align to its starting position and a "clean sweep" will commence, which will vaporize any living tissue still remaining inside the cube after a limited period of time.
Once they reach an "exit room" (a cube room through which the outside world may be accessed), they manage to use a secret auxiliary exit just before the clean sweep, and after swimming through water for some distance they reach land and try to escape. However, soldiers searching for them have already arrived (these are referred to as "Squad" in the movie, identified by a tattoo on their forehead that resembles the door to a cube). Rains manages to escape, but Wynn is shot by a dart that halts his progress.
Wynn wakes up, probably hours later, in a surgery room with a surgeon. He confronts Jax, who reveals Rains may have gotten away, but Wynn had been found guilty of "high treason" and "sabotage" against "[his] country and [his] God." He has been sentenced to "two lifetimes" and surgery on his brain begins. He then dreams about Rains reuniting with her daughter and praising Wynn as "a superhero."
Immediately afterwards, Wynn is placed back into the cube with other "lab rats" and appears to be mentally handicapped. In the last scene, Wynn is shown to act out a scene from Cube in Kazan's role possibly indicating that Kazan was also once a technician, and also, assuming that Wynn=Kazan, infers that Kazan, in Cube, did not survive, but merely left the shell only to be asked whether he believed in God....(and presumably incinerated, due to his lack of mental ability in being able to answer this 'correctly')
Traps
The traps in Cube Zero are more similar to the mechanical, plausible traps in the original Cube rather than the more sci-fi traps from Hypercube. Some traps from the original Cube also make return appearances.
- The swinging dicer from the original film makes a brief reappearance, as does the retracting spike room and flamethrowers.
- Nozzles come out of the walls that spray the victim with a clear liquid that looks like water, but is actually a highly corrosive substance. At first the victim seems fine, but after a short while, their body starts to dissolve and deteriorate, leaving nothing but the blackened bones. Ryjkin is killed by this trap (it may be possible that the substance only triggered when Ryjkin ingested the substance, as he is seen licking the liquid off his hands, believing it to be water).
- Relatively similar to the liquid trap (above) and flamethrowers, a new trap showers the victim in liquid nitrogen, freezing them and causing them to smash upon the floor.
- Needles built into the floor of the cube containing necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating bacteria) are stepped on or otherwise touched by victims. They are infected, deteriorate rapidly, and die shortly after. Jellico is killed by this trap.
- Bolts connected to wires are shot across the room. Several of these ensnare the victim. The wires are tightened which cuts the victim into large chunks. Bartok is killed by this trap.
- The doors of the room seal and panels close over them. Arms extend from these panels and unfurl into five dish-like speakers. These speakers then pulverise the victim with intense soundwaves, causing them to explode, and leave nothing but their blood-stained clothes. Meyerhold is killed by this trap.
The question of what happens to the remains of the Cube's victims is also answered in Cube Zero. The Cube is swept thermally (a clean sweep) when the cube resets, removing all matter - both the remains of victims and also survivors that have not found a way out. This explains why the device is not littered with the remains of previous sets of victims.
Cast
- Zachary Bennett as Eric Wynn, a Cube technician.
- Stephanie Moore as Cassandra Rains, a political demonstrator.
- Michael Riley as Jax, a higher ranking Cube technician.
- Martin Roach as Robert P. Haskell, a soldier employed to take people for the Cube.
- David Huband as Dodd, a Cube technician.
- Mike 'Nug' Nahrgang as Meyerhold, a man trapped in the cube.
- Richard McMillan as Bartok, a man trapped in the cube.
- Terri Hawkes as Jellico, a woman trapped in the cube.
- Tony Munch as Owen, a cube technician placed in the cube.
- Jasmin Geljo as Ryjkin, a man trapped in the cube.
See also
- Cube series for more details about how this film relates to the other Cube movies.
- List of movies
- Cinema of Canada
