CUBE @ 25

A small group of people wake up in a cubic room whose walls are backlit circuit boards. This is after a prologue which shows us that there is a system of such rooms, accessible through doors in each wall, and some of them have fatal traps. None of the characters can recall why they were chosen to be there, or when they were reclothed in the prison-like overalls that bear their names. What is it? A survival game, a sadistic futuristic jail, a Hellraiser-ish afterlife? There no clues given beyond the threat of their annihilation if they chose to enter the wrong rooms. They try to reason their way to action but if they were chosen for their particular abilities they might also have been chosen for their snappiness. This is a crew that fights as easily as cooperates. Gonna be a long haul out, if out is actually possible.

Vincenzo Natali's puzzle sci-fi demonstrated how much a little imagination and a small doubled set could do at a time when mainstream genre cinema was growing so lavish that one look through the weightless early CG would reveal how insubstantial all that money could really look. At the end of the decade this reached its Olympic scale when George Lucas returned to his Star Wars realm and attempted to wipe the table of all else. The problem with that, though, was that smaller and smarter sci-fi was showing it up. If the remake of The Haunting was embarrassed by The Blair Witch Project then The Phantom Menace didn't have a patch on The Matrix. Just before that, was Cube which could have been a Twilight Zone episode from the 1960s but clocked in at a tidy ninety minutes and spoke volumes with those two joined boxes for its set.

While we aren't whisked away to galaxies far far away we are invited into the intellects of people who see patterns and meaning in what they are given. They are also, daringly, to be almost right before big mistakes guide them to develop their thinking. The conflicts that flash up like old middle European states are where the flesh, blood and nervous systems appear to threaten the progress that requires concentration and collaboration if they are to survive.

The sci-fi enters through the technology but also the possibilities of why it was created and used. Reasonable propositions only lead to fearsome conclusions and the group's conspiracy-monger freely shares her every theory whether plausible or absurd and this, as it must, lights a few emotional fuses which attack the life-affirming unity. While this is not allowed to cause the kind of incredible mass delusions as it did decades later when a pandemic infected everyone with a lot of impotent rage, an internet account and paths to echo chambers, its inclusion in the dialogue is incisive. That the abstruse claustrophobia of the situation could fuel both fanciful antagonism and physically violent self interest is part of the sadness of the story that prevents it from feeling like an old tv episode. Whether it is entertainment for the rich and powerful or a machine working well beyond its purpose in perpetual motion, the bipedal lab rats might well create their own doom.

A scenario like this is fraught with the need for rapid communication of plot points as well as pauses to examine puzzle solving as well as allow for interpersonal conflict. This gives Cube its fairly brittle, overstated performances. On the other hand, I don't know how well any of its audience would do at being kind and reflective. Maurice Dean Wint often gets mentioned as a histrionic action figure and his eye rolling and grimacing can approach parody but his provision of real threat serves to negate this response. His counterpart David Hewlett, a penpushing nihilist who might know more than he's letting on stretches our patience with his eagerness to find everything ironically hilarious. The paranoid Nicky Guadagni works probably the hardest of all to provide depth beyond her refulgent outbursts. Nicole de Boer plays young and of shifting loyalty but her intellect is believable. Once, you accept the stridently drawn roles you'll be ready to watch such development as the desperation in the story permits. 

Cube is a marvel of economy, a fistful of big ideas in a tight package, the very thing that sci-fi boasts at its most effective. The elegance of its design whereby different rooms are lighted with their own colours would impress if it were not that it is so organic to our experience of the setting from the prologue onward that we quickly accustom ourselves to it. Add a well designed audio scheme and you're there with them, locked and loaded. And this film plays out again and for as many times as you might revisit, as freshly as you first saw it.