Cube is a 1997 Canadian psychological thriller/horror film, written by André Bijelic, Vincenzo Natali and Graeme Manson and directed by Vincenzo Natali. It stars a group of five people trapped inside a giant mechanical 26x26 cube, with traps scattered amongst the rooms who have to find their way out before being killed by the traps or dying from dehydration and starvation inside of it.
Plot[]
| Spoiler Warning: The following contains important plot details of the entire film. |
The film begins on a man name "Alderson" on his shirt waking up in a white room. He proceeds to go around to multiple doors in the room and opens them, only to find more empty rooms. He jumps into one of them and gets gored by a giant metal grid that then retracts from where it came.
A man with the name "Quentin" with blood on his hands reaches up into a white room with another man with the name "Worth" lying on the floor, unconscious. After checking a light brown room, he closes the door and goes over to Worth, who has awoken. Another door opens, and Quentin forcefully drags in a woman named "Holloway" and nearly starts to assault her. After they hear a rumbling around them, they hear a girl, whose name is "Leaven" shouting for help. Quentin the helps her into the white room in a very rushed manner. Moments later, a man named "Rennes" enters the room and joins the group, and they all start talking to each other, very frantically. Holloway attempts to get Worth's attention again, and as they're doing that, Rennes opens another door and demonstrates a trap, then explaining that some rooms are trapped, so he tests them by throwing his boot in and seeing if it activates.
Rennes then tells everyone to suck on a button from their shirts to keep the saliva flowing, and continues on with the group until his plan fails and he's sprayed in the face with acid. Later on, a mentally disabled man named Kazan joins the group, and while Holloway attempts to help assist him, Quentin has no patience for it and attempts to continue on, leaving them behind. Leaven then figures out that only rooms that are prime numbers are trapped, but this fails when Quentin hurts his leg by setting off a trap. He then blames her for setting him up, but everyone attempts to continue on without him due to his arrogance and blaming of Kazan because "he knew".
After a rest, Leaven attempts to decipher the numbers while Quentin and Worth argue, with Worth revealing that he helped design the outer shell of the cube for a "shady bureaucracy". After telling them that there is no hope and there is nobody watching, Quentin asks why they would put people in it. Worth then says that "You have to use it, or admit that it's pointless." Once Quentin tells them the dimensions of the outer shell, Leaven calculates that there is a maximum of 17,576 rooms in the cube, with one extra as a bridge to the outside, and that the room numbers are cartesian coordinates.
After traveling, they find multiple rooms all around them that are trapped, and instead of backtracking, they find a sound-activated trap that they all attempt to pass through. Kazan, unable to control himself, lets out a noise as Quentin is passing through, causing the trap to activate. Quentin then assaults him and accuses him of trying to kill him, with Holloway fighting back against him and accusing him of being an abusive husband whom likes young girls.
The group reaches a room at the end of the cube, and they all take their shirts off and lower Holloway down so she can reach another room, but when the cube shakes, they all lose their grip except for Quentin. He then looks her in the eyes and intentionally lets go, letting Holloway fall to her death, but claiming that he couldn't hold on. Later, he attempts to get Leaven to leave worth and Kazan, but attempts to sexually assault her, with Worth attacking him. Quentin then violently beats him up and drops him down into the room below. Worth, surviving the fall, realizes that that was the room Rennes died in and that they've been going in circles, leaving Quentin horrified that no progress had been made.
Leaven then deduces which rooms are trapped, with it being revealed by powers of prime numbers, but telling Quentin that those numbers are too big for her to calculate. Kazan, whom is a savant, can do the calculations very quickly. They then proceed to the cube's edge, with Worth trapping Quentin between rooms, then proceeding to drop him into the room below, seemingly killing him. They slowly make their way to the cube's bridge, but Worth and Leaven are separated from Kazan momentarily. They then catch up with him again and reach the bridge, but Worth is guilt-stricken and refuses to leave. Kazan goes through, but immediately Quentin catches up and stabs Leaven through the chest with a door handle, brutally killing her and mortally wounding Worth. He attempts to leave, but is held back by a dying Worth, who causes Quentin's torso to be the furthest he gets outside the cube, splitting him in half.
Worth then crawls over to the dead Leaven to die next to her, with Kazan wandering into the light, his fate left unknown.
Cast[]
- Maurice Dean Wint as Quentin
- David Hewlett as Worth
- Nicole de Boer as Leaven
- Nicky Guadagni as Holloway
- Andrew Miller as Kazan
- Julian Richings as Alderson
- Wayne Robson as Rennes
Trivia[]
- All of the characters names are based on actual prisons in real life and their traits are generally based on what those prisons are known for. (Quentin being based on San Quentin, known for their brutal treatment of their prisoners, Kazan being a Russian prison for the mentally disabled, etc.)
- An ending showing what was outside the Cube was planned and filmed, but was later deleted by the director.