Cube (1998)

Powerful

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

One of the best movies I have ever seen. Though it's an old movie, I bet it can compete any other movie in this category at any period of time.

Reading all these great reviews, I expected an awesome sci-fi fi flick. Instead, I couldn't believe how bad the acting was. It was embarrassingly bad. It made trying to stay in the story impossible after a while. My friend and I finally gave up after about a half hour and turned it off. Maybe if we'd stayed till the end, some epiphany would have exploded in our minds to leave us loving this movie like so many other people seem to? Did we leave too soon? Did the acting get better? Was there some brilliant movie making that was just about to happen right after we turned it off? I guess we'll never know....there's too many really good movies out there to spend time on one with bad acting :(

I guess you would have to classify this Canadian film as an example of how to intelligently make a low budget science fiction film. All too often cheap sci-fi movies end up falling under the bracket of film which can best be described as 'corridors in space' movies, i.e. lots of scenes of people running (and walking) up and down corridors (of the future). These movies are almost always deeply tedious, at least partially on account of their limited settings. What Cube cleverly does is use this handicap to its advantage, where the limited location is also kind of the point of the entire movie and part of its overall suspense generator. A group of people wake up and find themselves in a high-tech maze made up of giant inter-connecting cube shaped rooms; some cubes having deadly hidden traps situated in them. It is an imaginative and original idea for its time and it sure makes the most of limited budget by using its sets in this way.What it all boils down to is a puzzle movie where we follow a bunch of people trying to work out how they got where they are. It has the good sense to remain pretty enigmatic in many respects and not explain everything, and realising that it is often the questions which are more interesting than the answers. While there are a few memorably gory moments, the approach is very much more psychological and all the better for it. It is not a perfect film, as it suffers from some weak performances and the setting does - slightly - suffer from over-familiarity to at least some degree. But, on the whole, this is a commendably original bit of low budget sci-fi which deserves its cult status.

Cube: Cube is a story of six or so people who wake up in a... well... cube. On each side of the cube (including above and below), there are doors that lead to other cubes. Some of the cubes have deadly traps. There are three etched three-digit numbers on each cube that may provide a clue whether a particular cube is deadly and may also provide a clue on how to escape. Can the figure a way out without getting killed before they succumb to starvation or thirst or are simply driven mad?The Good: I have a lot of pet peeves in movies. One of the biggest is films that explain everything to the audience as if we were dimwitted fourth graders. The Cube explains nothing. I love this. We can decide which of the characters speculations are correct or even if any of them are. This creates a wonderfully engaging film.The film is well written with some excellent character arcs. Some of the characters are a little on the trope side of the equation (I am looking your way Rain Man) but overall it is an engaging group. There is a nice argument between just moving forward one cube at a time and the idea of trying to figure out what it all means. The movie really doesn't take sides once again allowing the viewer to decide which approach is best.The special effects are actually quite good when they make an appearance and the set keeps one's interest for the relatively brief running time.The Bad: The movie plays its room trap cards pretty early in a truly spectacular way. One wishes they had revisited that a bit more throughout the film. The film also suffers a little from the we ran out of cannon fodder too soon syndrome.It really isn't that hard to figure out is a three digit number is prime. If it is an even number or ends in a five it isn't prime as an example. Our so-called math expert in the group took way to long to figure some of these out.In Conclusion: This is a great example of how to make a low budget film with only seven actors, one set, and an engaging interesting script. The last part is a nut plenty of big-budget movies have yet to crack. Like the early Saw films, Cube is greater than the sum of its parts and a wonderful example of minimalism in a film.