Summary
A seemingly random group of citizens are abducted from their homes for unknown reasons and imprisoned in a gigantic cube-shaped structure made up of thousands upon thousands of cube-shaped rooms, each 14 feet on a side, and each connected to its neighbors by means of a hatch in each wall. Some of the rooms are booby-trapped, and the resultant deaths are lovingly filmed and extraordinarily gory. The survivors begin to learn the secrets of the Cube, and are able to avoid some of the dangers it presents. But at the same time, the group begins to crack from within.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
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Barbara's Rant
The Cube deaths really weren't what got to me about this movie, but I just have to give a mention to the human cheese-slicer room (you know the kind, with criss-crossing wires to push the cheese through). Keep in mind that this took place about 2 minutes into the movie. I'm not especially squeamish, but the detail on the chunks of leg flesh was really disturbing.
I'm not kidding about this movie getting to me, either. Once I started it, I had no choice but to finish it, but I was really wishing that I had someone to watch it with me. Unfortunately Barbara Jo was out of town, and there was no way that Large Bear was going to watch anything this disturbing with me. It actually gave me a nightmare, which is very rare for me. I occasionally have nightmares which could be horror movies if they were filmed, which is actually kind of cool. My Cube nightmare, though - not so cool.
I think what really bothered me was how plausible it all felt. I realize that's kind of an odd thing to say about a movie that asks you to accept that the government randomly selects people for imprisonment and probably death inside an impossibly complex and completely secret Cube. Also, you never get to know why any of it happened. Why those people? Where is this Cube? How could it have been constructed in secret? What possible purpose could it serve?
In the end, though, I don't think it matters. As implausible as it may be, for me the Cube was the perfect embodiment of humanity's worst, most wasteful and vicious creation. Naturally, this made it important for me to be able to root for the innocent victims of the Cube. But by the end of the movie, the group had disintegrated and one member had completely broken down, and the danger and violence from within the group was much worse than anything the Cube had to offer. And that really, really depressed me. Not that it's a new concept to me, that adversity can bring out the worst in people. Or, for that matter, that some people are just hateful and violent. But it was very upsetting to spend the movie hoping that this little group of humanity's representatives would make us proud, and they failed. It was actually kind of like a Star Trek Q episode, except without a happy ending.
BARBARA MAY
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