It’s one of those sure-fire story ideas, the kind that will seem familiar to anyone who’s watched an old sci-fi TV Series. A handful of strangers awake to find themselves trapped in a maze with no exit. Each cube-shaped room has six doors leading to identical rooms. Since they can only survive a few days without water, the strangers must work together to escape. Enter the wrong room and a lethal trap will kill you instantly. Done well, this premise lends itself to unbearably tense situations with interesting puzzles. Done poorly, it can be cheesy, especially in the hands of inexperienced actors. Cube turns out to be both.
Cube smartly opens with one of its biggest shocks, filling all future decisions with dread. Every time someone enters a new room, my body would tense up, and there’s one room in particular that matches the most suspenseful Mission: Impossible break-in. One good thing about the characters is learning how each one has a special skill, and they can be combined to figure out how to survive. There’s also more than one right combination so if someone is killed it doesn’t doom the group. Still, the mystery of the building and the nature of the traps are far more interesting than the people trapped inside.
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