Cube [Blu-ray]

Director: Vincenzo Natali Vincenzo Natali

Overview

This low-budget science-fiction drama, winner of a 1997 Toronto Film Festival prize for "Best Canadian First Feature," depicts the plight of a group of people clad in prison-style uniforms and trapped in futuristic cube-like metal cells. Their memories are hazy; no one can recall how they got there. Alderson (Julian Richings) awakens in a cell, seeks an exit, and arrives in an adjacent cube where he's sliced and diced. Former cop Quentin (Maurice Dean-Wint) becomes the group leader, and he's challenged by conspiracy theorist Dr. Holloway (Nicky Guadagni). Government worker Worth (David Hewlett) remembers a past government link to the project. A discovery that the cubes have numerical codes suggests study by math-student Leaven (Nicole deBoer) while former thief Rennes (Wayne Robson) knows some escape tricks. However, the extreme behavior of Kazan (Andrew Miller) becomes a threat to their survival. The film was also shown at the 1997 Vancouver Film Festival.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/14/2023
UPC:	0785034210419
Original Release:	1997
Rating:	NR
Source:	Terror Vision
Language:	English
Time:	1:48:00
Sales rank:	20,155

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Nicole de Boer	Leaven
Nicky Guadagni	Holloway
David Hewlett	Worth
Andrew Miller	Kazan
Julian Richings	Alderson
Wayne Robson	Rennes
Maurice Dean Wint	Quentin

Technical Credits

Graeme Manson

Vincenzo Natali	Director
Colin Brunton	Executive Producer
Mehra Meh	Producer
Betty Orr	Producer
Justine Whyte	Executive Producer
C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures	Special Effects
Steve McNamee	Sound/Sound Designer
Jill Purdy	Sound Editor
Sue Conley	Sound Editor
John Laing	Sound Editor
Todd Warren	Sound/Sound Designer
Stephen Barden	Sound Editor
Craig Henighan	Sound Editor
John Sievert	Sound Editor
Darcey Kite	Sound/Sound Designer
Peter Kelly	Sound/Sound Designer
Graeme Manson	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

A triumph of imagination over budget, Cube is about as sharp and tense as they come -- especially for a psychological thriller shot in a single room, transformed into multiple rooms by a bunch of colored light filters. It's a take-notice debut from Canadian screenwriter/director Vincenzo Natali, and not only because it creeps out its audience far more than a film costing under 500,000 dollars has any business doing. In fact, with its sophisticated special effects, makeup effects, and script, it doesn't even call attention to its own underdog status. Cube is a penetrating sociological study of human hamsters in a giant maze -- how they address an unfathomable predicament, how they scrap to survive, and how they keep from cracking up, or fail in that regard. Since Natali is not afraid to tamper with the audience's expectations for certain characters, the film is truly unpredictable. Yet his script is gradual enough that none of these reversals can be considered anything so pedestrian as a "plot twist." The stakes are established early with a couple scenes of visceral gore, previewing the potential of this meat-grinding Rubik's cube. Mindful of the consequences of a misstep, the characters come to embody not only the human mind's disparate skills needed to solve such a puzzle, but also the wide range of emotions and potential reactions to it. The wild card in the equation, as if there needed to be one, is Andrew Miller's autistic man. Brilliantly, the audience isn't at first sure whether he's mentally handicapped, or reduced to spouting nonsense after years trapped inside this nightmare.

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