Cube Zero
October. 15,2004 RA young programmer whose job is to watch over the reality-warping Cube defies orders to rescue an innocent mother trapped in one of its rooms.
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Reviews
You won't be disappointed!
Just what I expected
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
If "Cube Zero" was an attempt to right the ship after the mistake known as "Cube2: Hypercube" then it was a failed attempt. They did nothing to restore credibility or goodness back to the franchise. The acting was just as poor if not poorer and there was nothing new except more scenes outside of the cube.If I can comment on the acting for a bit because I feel I must. Now I believe that the pitiful acting is on purpose. For the actors to deliver their lines like they are doing voice overs for kung fu movies or doing voice overs for chipmunks just doesn't make sense. Their words were abrupt and choppy like they had to suddenly stop talking or they'd run out of breath. Nothing about their acting was good--the delivery of the lines, their facial expressions and their expressions of different emotions. Even if the plot was good they would have sank it.Back to the story. Again, like "Hypercube", they fed us a little more information about the cube's purpose and who may be behind it. This is supposed to be a prequel so the cube you know in "Cube" is pretty much the cube you see here. Still, after having watched all three parts to this series I don't understand the significance of the cube participants.It tries and fails to explain "Cube": the reason for its existence, who's behind it and why we know so little behind the characters. I don't know if it's fair to say they tried to explain because they really didn't. They just added more confusion and more mystery to a mysterious thing. This installment from the Cube trilogy is less intelligent, less creative and filled with more deus ex machinas (plot devices whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object). "Cube Zero" at least forecast it's ability to be entertaining: zero.
Let me start with saying this: Hypercube wasn't that bad. It definitely didn't work as a sequel to Cube, but was decent as a STAND-ALONE FILM. Definitely kinda dumb, but a guilty pleasure. But I'm not here to talk about Hypercube. This is Cube Zero. And Cube Zero makes its first mistake in the opening scene: it tries to copy the tension sudden horror from the opening in Cube. Only that instead of getting sliced into cubes, he thinks acid is water at first. I do give it points for being fairly frightening and it's actually the only scene in the movie to give me the creeps. But it's still a lazy attempt to make fans of the first movie intrigued. But this is one of the smallest offenders. Before I go on to the next thing, this is not a spoiler for THIS movie. However, it's hard to talk about this movie without referring back to the ending of Hypercube, so what the hell, I put the spoiler tag here anyway. It's revealed that the secret behind the cube is, wait for it... TWO GUYS IN A DIRTY LITTLE ROOM PLAYING CHESS. Wow! What a astonishing yawn-dropping plot-twist! Except it's not. It's like Ernie Barbarash assume the audience is a hoop of hamsters who will be mesmerized by anything, no matter how stupid it is. Even though this is a really f ucking dumb twist, it could MAYBE have worked if these two individuals are two psychotic creeps with no remorse of human life. Still not very good, but at least would make for a more decent movie. But nope. These are two poor pathetic saps trapped in a room playing chess... and drawing a little. David Huband, who is playing Dodd... is AWFUL. He. Is. Freaking. Terrible. If you want an actor playing a kid occupying a playground and shouting at everyone, sure. But otherwise, he just doesn't fit for the role. That his lines are horrible doesn't help either. God, he was just PAINFUL. Zachary Bennett, who plays his friend, is a whole lot better. He could be worse than that and still a better actor than Huband. Bennett is the kind of actor where you think "Why the hell didn't he assign for a better movie?". But many actors make mistakes (or in some cases, their agents) when choosing movies to have a part in. The first forty-five minutes in essentially pretty much nothing. All the fun and excitement is gone. The heart-pounding tension is not there either. The one-dimensional, but entertaining characters, from the first movie, gone too. Eric Wynn is less of a cardboard cut out than Dodd, but I still don't care very much for any of them. There is a scene I had a chuckle at though. The one where Dodd has a poor bastard trapped in a dark room, and receives the question "Do you believe in God?". Confused, he answers no... and dies. This scene was meant to show how the two main characters are forever destined to watch and give people a living hell, but the execution of it made the scene dumb, not effective. After the snail slow first half, Wynn decides he's tired of sitting in a room doing nothing, so he enters a cube to help some individuals out. And there individuals... they all suck. None of them has any sort of character trait to give a crap about at all. So not much to say about these people, since I can't even remember how they were like. Or looked like. Oh one more thing, there's someone in the cast playing Cassandra Rains. Who was that again? Eh, who cares. As contrived and idiotic most of the movie is, it does at least have a good villain. Michael Riley, who is playing Jax, seems to have a lot of fun in his role and gives the movie some energy when he's featured in a scene. If not for him, my rating for this movie might be even lower. He also has the better lines of the movie.I haven't gotten to the ending yet. Oh my God... Oh my God, WHAT?! Wynn is re-incarnated as Kazan??? I mean, I've seen some dumb movie endings in my life, but this is F UCKED! I feel like someone just raped me and went "Sorry bud, you are gonna have to live with this."The cinematography is nice and two actors in the movie do their best, but aside from that, this is a disgrace to Cube and to well-made horror movies. If you want to rip on this movie, see it with some pals. But do for the love of God not see it yourself. You will wish you spent your time watching Cube for the second time instead, funny enough.All right, I've said all I can think of. But I will never stop being angry at the fact that this movie was even made.
Surprisingly Cube Zero does not center mainly around the people trapped in the cube. Of course there are still people who wake up inside, get to know each other and then either die horribly in one of the gruesome traps or get killed by one of their own turned psychopath. It wouldn't be a Cube film without this. However Cube Zero focuses on what happens outside the Cube. We get to see a glimpse of who/what is behind the growing mystery, formed by the earlier films, that is the cube(s). However, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, Cube Zero raises about as many questions as it answers. I will not give away anything here though, you will just have to watch it and see for yourself.The plot has a lot of twists and turns along the way, including a big one that ties in very nicely to the first film. The film certainly has better writing than its predecessor Hypercube (2002) and may even surpass the original. Some of the characters are still fairly shallow, especially the people inside the cube, but otherwise the writing is inventive and a lot less cheesy than in the other two films.The acting is also quite good. Despite having unknown actors the characters are portrayed believably and are fun to watch. The direction is well paced, and while Cube Zero is not the tensest of the three, it still keeps you wanting to watch by asking another question every time it answers one.Cube Zero definitely had a lower budget and maybe this isn't a bad thing. It created the need for a strong script and after all this is what these films depend on. It makes you think, it keeps you wandering what is going on afterwords and this makes it a good film. I can definitely recommend it.
The whole Cube franchise is a very enjoyable string of B movie gold. That is its low budget, cheesy and bad acting but yet its one of those guilty pleasures and its so very enjoyable. For low budget movies th special effects are good and at some points make your stomach turn because of how lifelike it is.This movie is a prequel of the other cube movies. It shows a lot more in depth about the people controlling the cube and it kind of explains the orgins and where everything comes from.This movie is good definitely better then the second one probably not as good as the first. If you like the other Cube movies or if your a fan of SCI-FI/horror B movies then give this a watch.