MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD - GO PLAY WITH A RUBIKS CUBE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE SPOILERS
Cube is one of those movies that has to be seen to be believed. What if I told you that this movie was 5% gory death scenes and the other 95% is.....MATH?! Yes you heard me right, math. Like, numbers and stuff. It's honestly not the craziest thing I've ever seen out of a horror movie, but it's definitely up there. How this movie works is that it pulls you in by killing off two people in the first ten minutes with extremely cool and graphic deaths. And that's it. No really, that's it. Until the climax, you don't physically see anybody die. The Cube is a very strange place, it never explains how the cube got there or what it's purpose is. The whole movie is just a big confusing mess. The only sort of explanation we get is from this one guy in the group of people who happened to be the lead architect for the outer shell of the cube and not even he knows about what the cube is all about.
To be fair, he doesn't look like he knows much about anything
There's one phrase in that sentence that will be the theme of this movie's plot, and that phrase is "happened to" Here, let me relay the major events of the plot to you in a format that better explains it. These people "happened to" all wake up in a cube together. You've got our old friend Worth, the man who "happened to" be the lead designer of the Cube's outer shell. You've got Leaven, the cute college girl who "happened to" be a math major in a movie where the main threat is a cube of interconnected smaller cubes, some of which are rigged with mechanical traps designed to kill people. The math bit is important because each bridge between cubes has numbers and Leaven uses these numbers to figure out in a matter of seconds a way to map out and escape the cube while avoiding the trapped rooms. Because of course that's how it "happens to" play out.
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You've got the character of "The Wren", who "happens to" be a world renowned prison escape artist. He's broken out of 6, oops sorry, 7, prisons and now he just "happens to" be here with a group of people who need to escape from a prison. HHHHMMMMMMM FANCY THAT. This character also is one of the two deaths in the movie that are actually cool. You see, we meet this character and then like 5 minutes later, his face gets melted off by acid. Woo, fun!
Pictured: Man after listening to latest Metallica album
This leads me to our next character, Quentin. Quentin is a cop who "happened to" know all about The Wren and his prison escapes, because where else would we get exposition like that? Quentin is also SURPRISE, the lead antagonist of the movie. He seems like a good leader at first, even if he can be a little forceful. Understandable, it's a stressful situation and he just wants to get out. However, as the film goes on, he becomes more and more psychotic and unpredictable towards his fellow Cubees, even to the point of dropping one of them (who isn't important in any way, trust me) down into the abyss of the cube's outer shell from a long long way up. His bloodlust just continues to grow bigger and bigger as he attempts to escape the cube by any means necessary.
Don't worry, its red paint from the red wallpaper paint on the walls, see?
Our last character is named Kazan (no relation to Kazam, the Shaq genie) and his character quirk is that he is mentally disabled. At first, this seems like a big hinderance to the group because he's constantly yelling and has to be helped throughout the cube rooms. However, this movie teaches us to never judge a book by its cover. You see, turns out that Leaven's system for figuring out the mapping of the Cube was WRONG this whole time! If she could figure out a way to factor the numbers inbetween rooms, that will lead them to the exit; but those numbers are way too big for someone normal to factor out! OH NO! WHAT WILL OUR HEROES DO?????
RAINMAN TO THE RESCUE!
Yessir, our handicapable friend Kazan just "HAPPENS TO" have the inhuman ability to factor huge numbers down to their base factors in an instant! WELL AIN'T THAT A COINKEEDINK! HOW CONVENIENT! And it's here that I, along with my friends, broke down because this movie is literally just one convenient plot device just thrown in out of nowhere after another. It's just utter nonsense and the fact that all of these people just "happened to" come together in this cube which has hundreds of other cube rooms in it is insane. Alright, let's just get to the ending.
So Kazan, Leaven, and Worth make their way to the "bridge cube", which is one cube room that is constantly moving around inbetween the inner cube and outer shell, forming a bridge to the one space in the outer shell that leads to the outside world. They do this all while running away from a now fully crazed and murderous Quentin, who literally rips a handle off of one of the steel doors and uses it to stab Leaven. RIP. Anyway, Kazan and Worth make it to the bridge cube right as it arrives at the exit space. At this point, Quentin storms in trying to stop them from escaping, but Worth holds him back right before he can reach Kazan, who is already out. Worth holds Quentin halfway in the bridge cube's escape hatch and in an admittedly cool death scene, Quentin is forced to watch as the bridge cube starts its movement back around the inner cube, taking half of his body with it. We end on Kazan walking slowly into the bright white sunlight of the outside world, not knowing what happens next or what to even expect next.
This is what zoo animals see when they look up at us looking in on their enclosures
So that's Cube. Is it good? Nah? Is it stupid? Of course it is. Did I enjoy it? Actually yes. This movie is a guilty pleasure and I think it's just got this charm about it that's unmistakable. I think a lot of that has to do with the simplicity of it. It's just a movie about a maze that has some booby trapped rooms inside of it. That's it. No big scary monster chasing the characters through it or supreme overlord changing the rooms to lead them to quicker deaths. It's a movie about a group of people coming together to figure out a way to escape a sci-fi cube prison. Even if the way they figure out that escape is way too convenient, I still think it's kinda cool how they incorporated these math theories into the workings of the cube. Apparently the entire movie was shot on one set and they only made one cube room to film in and just kept changing the color of the lighting behind the walls to make it appear as if they're in a different room. That's actually kinda cool and a very clever way of budgeting your movie. The few death scenes that we actually got to see were pretty gnarly. The one everyone remembers is the intro to the movie, where the guy gets diced up, which is insanely cool, even if the CGI of the trap folding back up after taking him out looked really dated.
Turn around bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart
I actually like this movie a lot, it's definitely one that I can show to people as a fun little "what the heck is this?" movie if they haven't seen it. It's definitely not a good movie by any means, but I still enjoy it on occasion and it's always gonna be on my guilty pleasures list. I'd say check it out if you wanna waste an hour and a half saying "huh? what? why? ok sure...". I give this movie 3 cubic meters of cubic zirconium out of 10. Give it a watch because who knows? It just might make your guilty pleasure list as well.
Mmm baby I love the way you carry the 1. Show me some long division and I'll show you MY long division ;)