Cube Zero

Following the release of Cube 2: Hypercube (2003), and playing off the alleged success of the original Cube (1998), Director Ernie Barbarash takes the liberty of bringing us the third installment in the trilogy, the prequel Cube Zero.

Deep in the bowels of a giant and faceless institution, time and place unknown, two low-ranking operators, Wynn (Zachary Bennett) and Dodd (David Huband) sit and observe on monitors the behavior of people that have been placed in a giant network of cubic chambers, some of which are rigged with death traps. Told that the people they are observing are convicted felons who chose this horrific and deadly ordeal over a lethal injection, these observers have had no problem with their jobs until Wynn, a mathematical genius, discovers that one of the prisoners, a woman named Cassandra (Stephanie Moore) never agreed to be put inside the Cube. Suddenly it's realized that perhaps their "jobs" are not what they seem, and that they may be part of something deeply sick and twisted...

For people that have seen and enjoyed the original Cube, this prequel will probably not be to your liking. It's not that the story does not have potential; it's simply that the first Cube film never needed to be expanded on. Standing alone, it is a neat little psychological thriller with very interesting concepts and a certainty about its own message. It was also nicely self-contained. The problem with Cube Zero is that it destroys some of the mystique of the original, attempting to answer questions with more questions but only really resulting in making a mess of what never needed fixing.

What this new film has to offer, which is questions about the psychological nature of authoritarianism and the banality of evil, certainly are good questions to be raised, but probably should have been done so on their own merits, rather than as a continuation of a film that had no such aspirations.

Having said this, the other traits of the film, such as acting and direction and writing, are not awful. There is a bleak, dark look to the film akin to such film noir as 'The Matrix' and 'Dark City', and they have certainly managed to recapture the claustrophobic feeling of the first Cube. Unfortunately for Barbarash, these are not enough positive qualities to save it.

The cube movies are the most inventive and satisfying creations in budget horror films today.

The first film is still in my top ten list and is a destined to be classic. I was a little disappointed by the second film which took a much more of a sci fi turn.

But this film returns to the grittiness of the first. Also being that we get to see the observers of the cube more, many connections (mostly to the first film) and secrets are revealed.

Many people say that they didn't like this because it jumps around out of the cube so you can't really get connected with the people in the cube. But honestly, that story has already been done, to perfection in the first cube film. This film is more about the button men who work at the cube.

This movie is awesome and is a perfect sequel to the original, and far more superior than the first sequel.

A perfectly adequate prequel to the first film. This time we see the men who operate the cube, but it doesn't take long to realise that they are still within the system.

This film owes a lot to the identity loss themes seen in Dark City and even the matrix, as the film resolves to show existence as a hierarchical and circular metaphor of continuous control.

This is low budget, but has a dated feeling that the original Cube film did not. Writers and set designers face a lot of pressure to create fresh ideas, and new ideas are sadly lacking here. The horror element is delivered well, but the sci-fi elements are rather tacked on.

(Saw this at Sci-fi London)

I was one of the enthusiasts of the original. It seemed a clever solution to one of filmdoms most persistent challenges: how to stage drama.

Noir is our most basic cinematic model. The core of noir is a universe where capricious fate toys with human destiny in cruel and arbitrary ways. "Cube" cleverly merged a modern noir vision with a solution to the staging problem.

Then along came the sequel which had no understanding of what made the original appealing and important. They turned it into a conventional government plot thriller with all the baggage that carries. Along the way, they introduced some pseudomathematical notions that were bizarre.

If there is anyone on the planet that would know how such a government program would work, it would be me. I wrote a comment about this which triggered a couple dozen messages among the editor of a film magazine, myself and the original author of "Hypercube."

As it happens, the original script was more true to what made the first one work, but it was coopted and changed by the same hack behind this.

So once again, here we have some sort of evil experiment by some agency. In the last one, that was actually a major weapons company. The one clever idea is similar to "Saw," where we watch the watchers of watchers watch. This folding is supposed to impute an evil to us that we see in the maniacal Dennis Hopper impersonator.

One of the intermediate watchers draws comics. This is textbook folding. Not clever, not worthy.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

i just finished watching it and taught it was great to have a perspective from observers outside of the Cube for once .i read some other user comment one especially saying the cube as not been ameliorated uplifted .well how could it be more advanced when the movie happens before the original cube.i also liked the fact that in this one you get the general idea on how and why people end up in the cube.Good death traps all around as usual ,groovy atmosphere a good film well done with a bunch of unknown actors that play there roles in a credible manner considering the type of film this is.i enjoy the less mainstream thriller horror pictures lately always more original than all those block busters remake from the good 70's movies which needed none of that remake bull@#@$ all together it was very entertaining i give it a 7.5 out of 10