31 days of Halloween: Cube

Cube is a 1997 Canadian horror film.

The film stars Nicole de Boer as Leaven, Nicky Guadagni as Holloway, David Hewlett as Worth, Andrew Miller as Kazan, Julian Richings as Alderson, Wayne Robson as Rennes and Maurice Dean Wint as Quentin. The movie is directed by Vincenzo Natali.

The film is, well, interesting and unique. The movie uses - perhaps - two or three sets total throughout the entire film. All of them are the same. Cubes. The story involves a group of people, all with memory loss, waking up and discovering themselves trapped in a complex of hundreds of cubes, with no idea what they're doing there or how to get out. Some rooms are safe, others booby-trapped.

The booby-trap rooms are full of shocking surprises - acid, razor wire, flames - you name it. Some are set off by movement, others - who knows.

I find a few problems with the movie, one being that we have absolutely no insight into why these people are part of this "experiment." While this may appear to be a pea for "spoon feeding," I would caution the reader that one must really care enough about the events that are going on within a film to allow themselves to forget about what the film isn't telling them. While an interesting character study, the problems I have with the film involve mostly the nature of why these people are there in the first place. It just isn't enough that it's a bureaucracy out of control, where people do things where the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand to such a degree that people could be drugged, had their memories erased, and then put into a situation where death is all but certain.

Perhaps it doesn't really matter, but without that crucial piece of information I find it hard to really connect to most of the characters. Perhaps the only failing - the only characters I could really connect to were Leaven and Worth - who were played by the two actors I was most familiar with (though I am also quite familiar with Wayne Robson from "The Red Green Show").

But hey, for a film that cost somewhere around a quarter of a million dollars (American) isn't half bad!

*** out of *****