Cube (Vincenzo Natali, 1997)

a Cube is another movie that sat in my room from Netflix for about two weeks before I watched it. Not a good sign, but I ended up enjoying it well enough. Although the acting and dialogue are sub-par at best, the intriguing and complicated idea of the film make it worth a viewing. I don't have too much more to say about the film than that. The acting is amateur at best, it's obvious that these people are first-time actors (at least, I hope so), and most of their performances remind me of high school theater, with their emotions played up to the fullest and most obvious way they could have been. The one exception was David Hewlett, who played Worth, the nihilistic architect. He was angry, sullen, and seemingly indifferent in ways that made the audience question his motives. The dialogue has the same problem, amateur-ness, and is often ridiculous, even laugh-worthy. Despite these definite flaws, Cube is like an episode of The Twilight Zone brought into the 21st century, with all the paranoia and isolation that goes along with living in the new century. The cube structure that these random strangers is a nightmarish place, filled with weapons and fear that have been building in these people their whole lives from living in this modern world. There are some cool violence effects, especially at the very beginning, when a man literally gets cubed. The film goes on a little longer than it needs to, but it's an interesting thought experiment that gets clouded up by bad acting and dialogue. 6/10 RIYL: The Twlight Zone, Saw (which seems to have lifted its premise from Cube and added more gore)

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