Six people find themselves in a large, cubical room with hatches on every wall, floor and ceiling. Quentin, a muscular beat cop, quickly assumes authority over the others. Holloway, a doctor, checks on Worth, a man who later reveals that he had a part - though a small one - in the construction of the structure in which they are all trapped. Worth gives young mathematician Leaven enough information for her to deduce that there are over 17,000 rooms in an enormous Cube - and when escape artist Rennes gets himself killed simply by entering another of the rooms, it becomes obvious that many of those thousands of rooms are lethally booby-trapped. This small group's attempt to escape the Cube evolves from an exercise in mutual trust into a desperate, bloody quest of attrition. Not all of them will make it back to the outside world.

A throughly depressing and formulaic movie, this Canadian-made indie film wound up on the Sci-Fi Channel after failing to secure any theatrical distribution channels...and I can quite frankly see why. All Cube really had going for it was a brilliant design for its one and only set, and the lovely Nicole deBoer of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame. That aside, I can't really recommend it.

       The movie's worst transgressions are in the areas of characterization and dialogue. You can tell which characters are going to die about five minutes before they bite it. And in the end, it's hard to bring yourself to care about any of them, with the possible exception of Kazan, the mentally disabled boy. Two thirds of the movie pass before two of these people even reveal a first name instead of a surname. (And moments after this intimate bond is formed, one of those two characters is iced. Go figure.) The weakest characterization of all is Quentin, the lead character, who goes from being the mildly annoying leader of the group to a stock horror flick bad guy. Along the way, we learn he's sexist, narrow-minded, violent, and possibly even a spouse/child abuser. With all of that in mind - especially the last piece of information - I could very easily see some viewers taking great offense at Quentin being the only black character in the cast. It's just too broadly stereotypical. Even I felt uncomfortable with it, and I try not to judge movies on their racial ratios (or lack thereof). This just stuck out like a sore thumb.

       In many ways, the first half of the movie is a more expensive-looking replay of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Allegiance, which dealt with the same basic theme of captives in a laboratory-type maze riddled with deadly logic puzzles. But at least the aforementioned Star Trek episode gave you a reason to be emotionally invested in the characters. So many irritating and unlikeable flaws are revealed so early on in Cube that I barely cared about any of the characters except for Kazan and Leaven.

       And this is all forgetting the fact that the movie never even answers the question of who assembled the Cube, and why. I could almost forgive that, but the film's dialogue makes some extremely ham-fisted attempts to turn the Cube into a metaphor instead of a literal place. And the metaphor isn't a very good one. It all adds to my impression that this movie was constructed around its solitary set, rather than a coherent idea or - failing that - even so much as a coherent metaphor. "What's out there?" asks Leaven just before the movie's needlessly violent conclusion, to which Worth replies, "Boundless human stupidity." He makes it sound as though the Cube is preferable to real life. As soon as I finished watching Cube and returned to real life, on the other hand, I have to admit that I was grateful it was over.

       A wonderful set, which could inexpensively (i.e. a change of lighting gels) be turned into another room, was probably the heart of this movie, the whole point of the exercise. It's a damn shame a story didn't come with it, though.

       Oh, one little update to this page. I like getting feedback from theLogBook.com readers, but inevitably some of it slides right off the weird end of the scale, like this one from an anonymous AOL user: "I don't think you are smart enough to watch TV. If you don't get the meaning of the story, that doesn't make it a bad movie, it makes you stupid for not seeing it for what it is, a view of life and beyond. It asks the question are people capable of being in heaven. Working together, helping each other, and using their talents toward a common goal. And in the end it is the mind of a child (without hate, angry, and greed), which was able to Exit the Cube." That's an interesting interpretation - now maybe the person who wrote it needs to look into a little anger management of his own just in case he ever winds up in the Cube...

• written by Andrè Bijelic, Vincenzo Natali and Graeme Manson
• directed by Vincenzo Natali
• music by Mark Korven

• Cast: Nicole deBoer (Leaven), Nicky Guadagni (Holloway), David Hewlett (Worth), Andrew Miller (Kazan), Julian Richings (Alderson), Wayne Robson (Rennes), Maurice Dean Wint (Quentin)