Lost in the Maze of Dangers

Slasher films have villains. Generally speaking, if you’re going to put a bunch of people together and have them get bumped off one-by-one, you need someone to do the selection-via-murder process. The fun of a slasher is watching not just the dumb teens (or whoever) get themselves into situations that, obviously, are going to get them killed, but also from then seeing the killer as they go about their heinous acts. The killer is as much a part of the formula, and a good killer can make for a far more enjoyable slasher experience.

Cube is a weird exception to the rule. A Canadian-made psychological horror thriller, the film plays in the conventions of the slasher genre. It sets a group of people together in a creepy locale, forcing them to try and find a way to escape their coming deaths, and then set up the various ways they’re going to get killed, one way or another. The only real change, though, is that there isn’t any specific killer involved. No Freddy, no Jason, not even the cruel and despicable spirit of the Grim Reaper setting up elaborate death sequences to catch those that got away (see: Final DestinationA series of films predicated on Rube Goldberg-levels of slasher murder, the Final Destination series has gone five films (and counting) to become one of modern horror's more successful franchises.).

No, the “killer” of this film is indifference. The setup leads us to think that there’s some government organization or operation behind these killings, behind this whole experience, and it’s only the function of the cube, and the actions of the people within, that cause the deaths. Be smart, be cautious, and you might just get through. But then, you also have to watch out for everyone else in the cube because it’s hard to know who you can trust, who is still sane, and who might just become the villain within the system while the villains without watch on.

Six people wake up in cubical rooms: cop Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), office drone David (David Hewlett), math student Leaven (Nicole de Boer), medical doctor Holloway (Nicky Guadagni), prison escape artist Rennes (Wayne Robson), and the autistic Kazan (Andrew Miller). None of them know why they’re there or what is really going on. All they can tell is that each was selected for some reason, some way to help them survive, or test each other, or to find a way out of the cubes.

The cubes are an interconnected series of rooms, each with a designated code number at their doors. There are doors in all six faces of the cubes, and you can go from one to the next seemingly indefinitely. But, there’s danger in the cubes. Not just from starvation and dehydration, in case they’re all stuck in there long enough, but also from the rooms themselves. Some are trapped, with deadly devices that can kill any one of them instantly. To escape, the prisoners (which is what they all really are) will have to figure out the mysteries of the rooms, as well as the configuration of the cubes, so they can find the only true exit… that is, if they last long enough without turning on each other.

Cube has a fantastic premise. People stuck together, with no obvious way to escape, as they’re forced to trust one another because there’s not much else they can do. That tension between wanting to trust another person while, at the same time, not really knowing who they are, adds a lot of drama to the story. The characters will say they’re one thing, but then reveal a past, or a part of their personality, that changes our understanding of them, gives us as viewers a lot to latch onto even as it feels like we’re going through endless rooms, on and on, through the movie.

The film is purposefully claustrophobic. The whole set of the film takes place in a series of 14 foot cubical rooms, and that’s all we see, for the most part, outside of a few quick scenes along the edge of the whole structure. This adds to the tension and the horror as these rooms mess with our sense of time, place, and structure. It’s one room after another, and while they’re each lit differently, so as to give us a sense of movement through the rooms, their feel and function is all the same. It’s a big series of rooms and we’re stuck in there with our protagonists.

This is really a masterful setup that, ingeniously, didn’t require more than a single set. The film was made inside one cube room, with a single working door, as well as one extra fake wall panel that could be shown through the opening of a door. One set for almost everything in the film, start to finish. It allowed the producers a way to keep the budget down, with the film only costing $350,000 CAD to film, without detracting from the setup of the movie. This was a film that benefited greatly from the small budget and creative requirements to develop the film efficiently.

And the few kills we get (with the small cast we have) are really good. The film opens with one, just to show us what to expect from the room, and then it doles the kills out from there at specific moments that add to the plot. The kills aren’t wonton or there simply to drive up the body count; they function as a way to illustrate the dangers of the situation and to teach us lessons about navigating the cube. These are slasher kills that are actually part of the story and essential to it, not just kills for fodder.

With that said, the film isn’t perfect. While I love the story and I think the production is delightfully claustrophobic, there are a couple of issues that hold it back from perfection. First, the film relies heavily on the trope of “autistic people are secret savants”, like somehow being autistic is a magical power. The film presents Kazan as a burden for most of the movie, with the rest of the characters having to drag him around, but then he gets his one magical power – math – and suddenly he’s the hero of the story. It doesn’t treat Kazan as a person, it uses him as a prop.

Meanwhile, I have to admit that the ending is kind of weak. The first 80 minutes of the movie are tight and well executed, but then there’s a last second twist that, in the context of the film, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (and spoilers for the rest of this paragraph). One of the characters goes crazy and the rest of the survivors have to ditch him. They then find the path to the exit, which transports them down the full 26 room face of the cube before setting them in a waiting room to get to a bridge room to get to the exit. But then, suddenly, the person they ditched is back, having managed to travel those 26 rooms in a mere couple of minutes, and all chaos breaks loose. From what we know of the structure, and how long it takes to travel between rooms, let alone how he’d even have been able to know exactly where they went, there was no way for this guy to show up when he did. It’s a trick played by the movie. It’s a cheat. It ruins the final moments of the experience.

I really liked this film when I first watched it, and I’ve gone back to it a few times because I think the setup and structure are really good. I do wish a couple of changes had been made to the plotting (Kazan could just be a math profession and not an autistic prop, while the end of the film needed a better way to get their crazed person to the finish), but I don’t know if that truly kills everything about the film. It’s really great for the most part, but now as perfect as it could have been. Still, for those that haven’t seen it and are looking for an unconventional thriller, I do think Cube is worth a watch.