Reviewed by Russell Baillie
CUBE ****
Cast: Nicole De Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Rating: M
Thinking outside the square. Terrible phrase, I know, but in this case it applies neatly. For in Cube that's just what its characters are trying to do.
Six strangers wake in a prison of
interlocking cubes. Each 3m-by-3m compartment has a door on the ceiling, floor and four walls. The cubes, which one character calculates make up a matrix of 17,576, occasionally shift position. And just to make it really tricky some of these surreal prison cells are lethally booby-trapped - with acid, slicing wires, that sort of thing.
The six - a cop, a thief, a maths student, a psychologist, an architect and an autistic adult - have to put aside their differences and pool their talents to find their way to the outside, while also pondering just who or what put them in there in the first place.
The debut feature by Canadian Natali certainly makes a virtue out of low-budget ingenuity in its thoroughly claustrophobic and spookily lit setting.
But while it wins an A for maths, the acting from its
cast of unknowns can be B-grade hilarious. Not that it stops a heart-thumping suspense throughout, generated as much by the mounting tensions between the characters as their panicked guesswork on which rooms might lead to a messy demise.
That's quite enough to make this feel like a fresh, less-is-more sci-fi flick. One that is part psychological lab experiment, part maths problem, and delivering as many twists as required by Mr Rubik's invention.
