Vincenzo Natali makes a maze of lethal rooms into a tense, resourceful thriller. The puzzles hold our attention even when the characters become tiresome, though the arguments sometimes last longer than their interest warrants.
Vincenzo Natali’s Cube is a good, tense science-fiction thriller with a better predicament than characters. Strangers are trapped in a maze of cubic rooms, some of them rigged to kill, and cooperation seems the sensible way out. Sensible behaviour is in short supply once fear and self-interest take charge. Natali gets considerable suspense from watching people try to solve a problem together while becoming less willing to listen to one another.
Jasna Stefanovic’s production design makes a single set sustain the illusion of a maze, and the repetition becomes increasingly disagreeable. Recognising the shape of the next room offers little reassurance when stepping inside may be lethal. Derek Rogers’s cinematography makes those confined spaces oppressive enough that searching them for a way forward becomes absorbing in itself. The visual ingenuity serves the suspense, keeping the basic predicament clear even when the workings of the place are difficult to understand.
We were properly tense at the prospect of the group entering another booby-trapped room. Having to judge a space before stepping into it is a simple fear, and Natali makes good use of it. John Sanders’s editing is at its most effective when it gives that uncertainty time to become uncomfortable, rather than hurrying towards the next danger. Mark Korven’s score adds to the unease, although the rooms and the people already provide enough reasons to worry.
The ensemble is more useful than uniformly persuasive. Nicole De Boer, Nicky Guadagni, Maurice Dean Wint and David Hewlett have to keep distinct personalities visible while the puzzle keeps demanding attention. The acting sometimes goes too broad, as though being trapped required everyone to underline the fact. Yet the shifting loyalties keep the exchanges alive, and the need to rely on someone whose judgement looks doubtful supplies a different sort of suspense from the traps.
The screenplay by Graeme Manson, André Bijelic and Natali is less convincing when it starts making its people illustrate ideas. Selfishness under pressure is credible; repeated demonstrations of it grow wearying when the characters have so little else to offer. At those points we can feel the film arranging another dispute rather than discovering anything further about the group. The running time is only 90 minutes, but some of these exchanges still make the journey feel longer than it needs to.
The mathematical puzzles give the characters something to do that needs thought, and thinking takes time they may not have. This is where Natali gets beyond the simplest version of a survival thriller, in which danger merely cues the next burst of movement. His group has to interpret its surroundings and negotiate with one another, so suspense can build without a chase. The broad social lessons are less interesting than the practical business of deciding what to try next.
We recommend Cube to anyone who enjoys working through a predicament alongside the people caught in it. A tolerance for arguments between thinly drawn characters will help. Do not expect every discussion to be as absorbing as the problem that prompted it. Watch it with someone whose judgement you ordinarily trust.
