There are two reasons that a film like Cube didn’t catapult any of its actors into instant stardom. The first is strictly to do with the talent of the actors involved–they aren’t good actors. The worst thing about Cube is the acting performances, in which the terrible performances stand out, while the not quite as bad ones end up not getting noticed at all.
The second reason that the actors won’t get recognition, whether they deserve it or not, is because the acting doesn’t really matter. Nor do the characters. Yes, there needs to be people in the film, and they all need to be unique enough so that we can distinguish between them and have them play off one another, but the characters themselves don’t really matter.
What does matter is the atmosphere that is built, making you feel like you’re in the movie. These other people exist, sure, but you aren’t concerned about them, and are more concerned about figuring out the mystery that is the cube you and they are stuck within.
The setup is quite simple: A select group of people wake up in a room, unaware of how they got there. There are doors around the cube-shaped room, one on each of the walls, one on the floor, and one on the ceiling. These doors all lead to similar rooms. These similar rooms are sometimes filled with traps of all sorts and sizes, ranging from poisonous gas to flamethrowers to a bunch of other things.
This group of people has no idea who made this prison, no clue how to escape, and few means to figure out whether a room is booby trapped or not. There is no food or water to be found, and all of the people’s possessions, save for prison-like uniforms have been removed. This is what the people in Cube have to deal with, and the journey you go on with them goes through room after room, all of which look the same.
The people you are stuck with are as follows: Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint) is a police officer, and ends up becoming the leader of the group; Leaven (Nicole de Boer) is a student who ends up using her mathematics skills to help the group out; Worth (David Hewlett) is a nihilist, believing that there is no hope for anyone; Holloway (Nicky Guadagni) is a doctor who believes that the trap is part of some conspiracy; Kazan (Andrew Miller) is an autistic man who is of little use. These are the characters in the film, what should the next step be?
After hours and hours of moving from room to room, people begin to no longer act like themselves. When the film’s atmosphere no longer becomes as great a threat, this is where most of the tension comes from. Going crazy is something that could happen to anyone, and the film milks this for all it’s worth. You can never be certain how stable any of the characters within the film are. This leads to you always question the motives of each member of the group, whether it be the over-ambitious Quentin or the reserved, introspective Worth.
This portion of the film–characters being suspicious and having real drama between one another–would be far more poignant had the characters been played by better actors. I’m aware that with this wasn’t exactly possible, but the majority of the acting in Cube was just terrible. Maurice Dean Wint is so completely over-the-top in every scene that it’s almost impossible to take him seriously, while Nicky Guadagni just can’t say a single line with any sense of purpose. Those two actors were by far the worst. There also weren’t any good performances in the film, with the best one given by Andrew Miller, playing an autistic character.
What I liked the most about Cube was the fact that very little about the structure the characters find themselves trapped within is explained. Not telling the audience exactly, or even partially, why what is happening is, makes everything feel even creepier. It also allows for discussion and debate once the film concludes, as you and anyone you can convince to watch the film with can talk about who you believe created the cube, and more importantly, why.
Apart from the abhorrent acting, I did get a little tired of seeing the same looking room for the entire film. I know it would have been an entirely different film had the environments differed more than they did, but I felt the need to mention that the scenery does get stale. If you end up not getting engrossed by the environment and the tension that it brings, you might start to get quite bored by it, just because the characters are almost always looking at the same thing, with the only difference being the color of the rooms.
I liked Cube. It had its problems, sure, but they didn’t end up being that important when looking at the final product. Yes, the acting could have been much better, and having different types of environments would have been more visually appealing, but there’s something to be said about the minimalistic approach that the filmmakers took in making a film that still ends up being as thrilling and intense as Cube is. It’s a low-budget film that is something I suggest giving a shot if you haven’t already.