Cube Zero

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.

Cube Zero is the third movie in the Cube franchise and rather turns in the direction of the first movie which worked the best, however in this one we follow Eric Wynn portrayed by Zachary Bennett who is working for the company that is accountable for the cube structures. He is questioning if it's morally excusable to work for a company that straight up kills people and he starts to doubt if the things they told him were all true. I think this is a pretty interesting concept and the movie needed to take a new step because just simply putting some characters in cubes with traps again would be probably entertaining but wouldn't bring the franchise much further. So we get to know a little bit more about how it is outside of these cubes and who is responsible for them.

And some people might absolutely hate that idea and some will love it. I personally enjoy it and think it was an interesting and risky step for the franchise to go. Like the other movies this one has some good gore and some pretty nice effects mixed up with some questionable looking CGI, however this movie was released in 2004 and therefore can't be judged too much based on that. One minor complaint I have is that I would have loved to see more of the cubes and their booby-traps themselves and don't spend so much time outside in an underground office because it feels like the character's in the Cube were neglected and therefore aren't as interesting as the ones being in the office.

Overall I think this is a good and entertaining movie and I enjoyed it more than the Hypercube one, however it's still quite a few steps away from the original in terms of quality and enjoyment. [6,5/10]

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.

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

Another group of individuals awake to find themselves trapped within the confinement of the now legendary Cube,with only their wits and their speed to save them.In this instalment,we also learn more about the people behind the Cube and the sinister true reason for it's existence...

As I watched Cube:Zero stretch out before me,I couldn't help but feel I was watching yet another example of a great original film,a far-fetched but undeniably inventive and thoroughly engaging science-fiction caper,being milked for all it's worth with tacky video sequels.For any gore-hounds out there,there's some impressive grisly dismemberment scenes to behold and the original angle remains as clever as ever,but it's no cleverer than it was before.The film is just that:a desperate and sad extension of it's original self.It's never made clear what the Zero in the title means,but zero is a name for cannabis,and that's sort of what it feels the screen-writers had been puffing too much of when they penned another entry into the Cube franchise.With some naff new central characters introduced (typical and dourly indicative of this kind of video sludge!) and a slumberous pace,one can only hope that this marks the final part of the now depressingly wearisome Cube franchise.**

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