Delayed Reaction: Cube

Premise: A group of people are trapped in a series of cubed rooms, many of which have traps, and they don’t know how to escape.

This comes from an enjoyable subset of SciFi movies that I wish I had a clever name for. They can succinctly be described though as “Smart Idea; Mediocre Acting”. A lot of directors who are later known for being perfectionists or visionaries have one of these. Darren Aronofsky’s Pi. Shane Carruth’s Primer. Or whoever made Circle. The idea is that there’s this high concept or really smart idea for a movie, but either because they are new, have no budget, and/or have no reason for people to believe in them, they get pretty mediocre actors for the movie. As an audience, you basically have to decide early whether the acting is too distracting or the idea is compelling enough to hold your interest.

 

Cube really challenged me in that respect. The idea is really fun. For a small budget, it looks great. The concept is immediately compelling. I was ready to be on board with it. However, the acting is so bad. I don’t know how to divvy the blame between the actors, director, and writing. I just know the final package was a lot of overacting and thin characters. If you are the kind of person who eats up even the most amateurish SyFy series, I imagine you’ll see this as a hidden gem. If you are the kind of person who could never get into even a Stargate series, like me, then you’ll struggle with this.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend