Never Trust the Adults

When we’re talking about remakes, a general rule when evaluating the worth of a remake is if it was actually, in some way, necessary. Hollywood has a tendency to remake films simply because they have an IP and a desire to see if it’s still worth money. Often the remakes have the name recognition but no real idea of what to do with the property. For every The Fly or The Thing (arguably two of the best remakes around), you have a bunch of films like 2002’s Rollerball, 2017’s Flatliners, and 2024’s The Crow. A bad enough remake can even taint the memory of the previous, good film you loved, and no one wants that.

I wouldn’t call Cube a classic film that was above the remake treatment. It’s a good psychological thriller, an interesting play on the conventions of slasher films, but it’s not a movie so outstanding in its form that it has to be put on a pedestal. Hell, the concept itself is malleable that any remake could, in effect, be considered a continuation or sequel to the original without violating the conventions of the form. Cube is great, but there’s no reason to presume you couldn’t make another. And in 2021, Shochiku Co., Ltd. did just that, making their own loose interpretation of Cube.

I want to note that I think foreign language remakes are one of the few times where the remake treatment could be okay. I personally don’t see an issue with adapting a work into a new language, especially if the goal is to open the story up to audiences that might have ignored the film otherwise. Japanese people may not have wanted to watch a psychological horror film in English, and they might have been more responsive to this film if it’s in Japanese. Plus, Japanese culture is different enough that even the same story from Cube would seem very different through the interpretation of Japanese storytellers. And that is true as this Cube, while bearing the similarities of the form inherent to this series, does clearly come from a very Japanese place. This is a different movie, a different kind of story, than what was released back in 1999. Whether or not that works for you, though, likely is dependent on where you sit culturally.

The movie opens like you would expect, with six people – Masaki Suda as Yuichi Goto, a 29-year-old engineer; Anne Watanabe as Asako Kai, a 33-year-old mathematics teacher; Masaki Okada as Shinji Ochi, a 31-year-old freeter; Hikaru Tashiro as Chiharu Uno, a 13-year-old middle school student; Takumi Saito as Hiroshi Ide, a 41-year-old mechanic; and Kōtarō Yoshida as Kazumasa Ando, a 61-year-old corporate executive – all trapped in a cube together. None of them remember how they got there, and they don’t have any clue what the cube is all about. But they get to exploring because there’s nothing else you can do but move forward.

As they progress through the cube, they find that some of the rooms are trapped. These traps seem to come from nowhere, at least until two of the prisoners, Suda and Uno, figure out that the various rooms are marked with numbers, and if those numbers are prime, the room will be dangerous. But even then that doesn’t help them figure out where they should be going, or how the rooms are constructed together. And as they slowly go mad from the constant dangers and repeated, seemingly endless, exploration, their darkest, most vile secrets will come spilling out.

It’s interesting watching Cube ‘21 after first seeing Cube ‘99, comparing the two for all the differences between the films. While they both have the same basic setup, the two films take very different paths when it comes to story and characters, and much of that comes from the cultures that made each film. The Canadian-made original movie was focused primarily on why the cube was made. Who built it, why they would want to, and what the cube does to the people. The Japanese version, though, doesn’t have its characters spend any time on thinking, “why?” They’re in the cube, and it doesn’t matter who or why or how. Instead, this film is focused on what the cube says about the characters and their own personal honor.

One key dynamic highlighted in Cube ‘21 is the difference between the freeter, Ochi, and the business professional, Ando. The older man slowly goes crazy within the cube, blaming his placement within the structure on everyone else. He’s a bad man, and he even admits it, but there’s no guilt or dishonor in his eyes for it; he did what he did to get ahead and he feels that justifies everything. Ando hates Ochi because the younger man “isn’t doing anything with his life.” He doesn’t work an office job, he’s not trying to get ahead. Even Ochi feels like he’s wasted his life because of who he is and where he works. In the eyes of the film both of these men are dishonorable, for different reasons, and that makes them more likely to die within the walls of the cube.

Then there is the idea of noble sacrifice. Suda bonds with Ida, a man who figures out how to explore the cube and how to stay alive. Eventually they become friends, and they take Uno under their wings. When he gets in danger, both are willing to put their lives on the line to save him. Ida does this because he did bad things in his past (that he won’t talk about) and now feels like he has to make up for it within this prison. Meanwhile, Suda had a brother outside the cube, and he feels guilty because he didn’t do enough to save his brother when the younger man became suicidal and threw himself from a building. He has dishonor on his soul, which, in a way, he can wash clean by saving Ochi. That might not be enough to keep him alive, long term, though.

Even though these characters are all built on versions we saw in the Canadian flick, they act and function very differently here. The men all have different motivations, different ways they function and behave. But when it comes to the women (or, in this version, woman), the differences are even more stark. Kaiwas based on Leaven from the original movie, but her original function – figuring out the math and navigating the rooms – is taken over by Suda. She’s also given a completely different backstory, going from a student to being a teacher, for the sake of… well, nothing, really. She doesn’t actually do much of anything in this film (unlike all the characters in the original), standing around on the sidelines and observing. It makes her far less essential to the story than she should be.

This, of course, is because (and here we have some spoilers) she’s actually a cyborg put into the cube to watch over everyone and track whether or not they deserve to escape. I have to say that this whole twist is absolutely bonkers and comes out of nowhere. Yes, the cube structure itself is futuristic looking and likely wouldn’t be something humans could build right now, but it is still grounded in some sense of modern reality. Making her a human-looking cyborg is a bridge too far, like the weird, futuristic retcons from Cube Zero that were added to the series seeming just to be more “sci-fi”. I get that cyborgs are a Japanese trope, but in this case it detracts from the feel of the story.

And what does her inclusion, in this way, really say? Because she’s a woman she’s judged differently than the men? Her composition means she’s not judged at all, and does that mean, then, that women aren’t put into the cubes because they’re somehow… more pure? And if that’s the case, why put a child in there? What did he do to require being shoved in a cube. If he’s there to prove a lesson for the men, that needs to be emphasized better because he could have just as easily died and then what happens?

I have to chalk much of this up to the differences between cultures, but it’s moments like this that make this version of Cube a harder film for me to enjoy. Maybe these change work better if you are Japanese; they certainly didn’t work for me. I would assume that you’d enjoy the movie if you were from that region and actually had to cultural attitudes that aligned with the storytellers here… except even reviewers from Asia seemed to dislike the film, calling it repetitive and dull.

That, actually, is a fair critique because, yes, the film is paced sluggishly. Along with the changes to the characters, the film’s story is also stretched out and changed. The film draws out all the story beats more, and spends a lot of time with the people standing around, talking at each other instead of delivering chills and thrills. This is supposed to be a psychological horror film but there’s very little horror and even less deep psychology. This is a leaden movie elevated only by its interesting premise. A premise, mind you, that we’ve already seen three times before in English.

I want to like the Japanese Cube, to give it some respect for taking the concept and putting a culturally different twist on the material. I think, with a lot of editing and tightening up on the story we could have had a decent entry in the series. But this film is so slow, and so clunky, that I couldn’t get into it the way I can with the original Cube. This film tries, but I’m not sure the creators really understood the interesting ideas the original movie had to offer. They made a remake that struggles to justify itself not because it was unnecessary but because it couldn’t translate itself well enough without losing the original’s magic.