Cube (film)

Though Vincenzo Natali had the initial inspiration to make a film "set entirely in hell" in 1990, it was not until 1994, when he was working as a storyboard artist's assistant at Canada's Nelvana animation studio, that he had completed the first script for Cube. The initial draft had a slightly comedic tone to it, and featured surreal images, a cannibal, edible moss that grew on the walls, and a monster that roamed the cube. Roommate and childhood filmmaking partner Andre Bijelic helped Natali strip the central idea – people avoiding deadly traps in a maze – down to its essence. Scenes that took place outside of the cube were jettisoned, and the identity of the victims themselves changed. In some drafts, they were accountants and in others criminals, with the implication being that their banishment to the cube was part of a penal sentence. One of the most important dramatic changes was the complete removal of food and water from the scenario; this created a sense of urgency for escape.[14]

After writing Cube, Natali developed and filmed a short entitled Elevated. The short was set in an elevator and was intended to give investors an idea of how Cube would hypothetically look and come across. While working on Elevated, cinematographer Derek Rogers developed strategies for shooting in the tightly confined spaces in which he would later work on Cube. The short eventually helped Cube procure financing. Cube was shot on a Toronto soundstage.[15]

The fictional Cube device in the film was conceived by mathematician David W. Pravica, who also served as the film's math consultant.[16] It consists of an outer cubical shell (the sarcophagus) and the inner cube. Each side of the outer shell is 434 feet (132 m) long. The inner cube consists of 26³ = 17,576 cubical rooms (minus an unknown number of rooms to allow for movement, as shown in the film), each having a side length of 15.5 feet (4.7 m). There is a space of 15.5 feet (4.7 m) between the inner cube and the outer shell. Each room is labelled with three identification numbers, for example, 517 478 565. These numbers encode the starting coordinates of the room and the X, Y, and Z coordinates are the sums of the digits of the first, second, and third number, respectively. The numbers also determine the movement of the room - the subsequent positions are obtained by cyclically subtracting the digits from one another, and the resulting numbers are then successively added to the starting numbers.[17]

Only one cube, with each of its sides measuring 14 feet (4.3 m) in length, was actually built, with only one working door that could actually support the weight of the actors. The colour of the room was changed by sliding panels.[18] Since this was a time-consuming procedure, the movie was not shot in sequence; all shots taking place in rooms of a specific colour were shot one at a time. It was intended that there would be six different colours of rooms to match the recurring theme of six throughout the movie; five sets of gel panels, plus pure white. However, the budget did not stretch to the sixth gel panel, and so there are only five different room colours in the movie. Another partial cube was made for shots requiring the point of view of standing in one room and looking into another.[19]

The film grossed $501,818 in the United States,[5] and $8,479,845 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $8,981,663.[4]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Cube holds an approval rating of 63%, based on 38 reviews, and an average rating of 6.29/10. The website's consensus reads, "Cube sometimes struggles with where to take its intriguing premise, but gripping pace and an impressive intelligence make it hard to turn away."[20] On Metacritic, the film has a score 61 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[21]

Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle was highly critical of the film, writing, "If writer-director Vincenzo Natali, storyboard artist for Keanu Reeves's Johnny Mnemonic, were as comfortable with dialogue and dramatizing characters as he is with images, this first feature of his might have worked better."[22] Nick Schager from Slant Magazine rated the film three out of five stars, noting that, while the film had an intriguing premise and initially chilling mood; it was undone by threadbare characterizations, and lack of a satisfying explanation for the cube's existence. Schager concluded his review by stating that the film "eventually winds up going nowhere fast".[23]

Anita Gates of The New York Times was more positive of the film, stating, "Cube, the story in question, proves surprisingly gripping, in the best Twilight Zone tradition. The ensemble cast does an outstanding job on the cinematic equivalent of a bare stage... Everyone has his or her own theory about who is behind this peculiar imprisonment... The weakness in Cube is the dialogue, which sometimes turns remarkably trite... The strength is the film's understated but real tension. Vincenzo Natali, the film's fledgling director and co-writer, has delivered an allegory, too, about futility, about the necessity and certain betrayal of trust, about human beings who do not for a second have the luxury of doing nothing."[6] Bloody Disgusting gave the movie a positive review, writing, "Shoddy acting and a semi-weak script can't hold this movie back. It's simply too good a premise and too well-directed to let minor hindrances derail its creepy premise."[24] Kim Newman from Empire Online gave the film 4/5 stars, writing, "Too many low-budget sci-fi films try for epic scope and fail; this one concentrates on making the best of what it's got and does it well."[25]

The film won the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival[26] and the Jury Award at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film.[27]