Cube (film)
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Vincenzo Natali |
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| Music by | Mark Korven |
| Cinematography | Derek Rogers |
| Edited by | John Sanders |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Trimark Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $350,000 |
| Box office | $565,727 |
Cube is a 1997 Canadian science fiction horror film directed and co-written by Vincenzo Natali. The film was a product of the Canadian Film Centre's First Feature Project. The film follows a group of people led by Quentin, a policeman, as they cross industrialized cube-shaped rooms, with some rigged with various traps designed to kill.
Cube gained notoriety for its surreal atmosphere and Kafkaesque setting, with the industrial, cube-shaped room design and concept. Since its release, the film received polarizing, yet favorable reviews, out of a mix of middling or negative reviews, and has since gained a cult following. The film spawned a film series, and a remake is currently in development at Lionsgate.
A man named Alderson awakens in a cube-shaped room with a hatch in each wall, the ceiling and the floor, each of which leads to other cube-shaped rooms, identical except for their color. He enters an orange room and, without warning, is killed by a trap.
In another such room, five people – Quentin, Worth, Holloway, Rennes, and Leaven – meet. None of them knows where they are or how they got there. Quentin informs the others that some rooms contain traps, which he learned by nearly being killed by one. Rennes assumes each trap is triggered by a motion detector and tests each room by throwing one of his boots in first. Leaven notices numbers inscribed in the passageways between rooms. Quentin recognizes Rennes as "the Wren", an escape artist renowned for getting out of jails. After declaring one room trap-free, Rennes enters and is killed when he is sprayed with acid. The others realize that there are different kinds of detectors, and Quentin deduces that this trap was triggered by heat.
Quentin believes each person has a reason for being there. Leaven is a mathematics student, Holloway a physician and conspiracy theorist, and the surly Worth declines to talk about himself. Leaven hypothesizes that any room marked with a prime number is a trap. They find a mentally challenged man named Kazan, whom Holloway insists they bring along. When Quentin nearly dies in a room deemed safe by Leaven's calculations, tensions rise due to personality conflicts and lack of faith in Leaven's system. Quentin provokes Worth into an argument about finding the exit, and Worth accidentally reveals that he has knowledge of the Cube. Worth admits that he designed the Cube's outer shell for a shadowy bureaucracy and guesses that its original purpose has been forgotten; they have been imprisoned within simply to put it to use.
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