RECENT WATCHES: Cube Zero (2005)

Whether it made sense or not, the release of “Hypercube” officially changed “Cube” from one clever sci-fi/horror indie into a franchise. Though nearly everyone agreed that the sequel was of lackluster quality, “Cube 2” must have sold pretty well on DVD. Three years later, Lionsgate would produce a third installment in the series. Perhaps deciding the gimmick of one giant cube filled with traps and secrets had played itself out, the next installment would go back in time. “Cube Zero” is a prequel, seeking to answer some of the mysteries established in Vincenzo Natali's original. Ernie Barbarash, who produced the previous sequel, would make his directorial debut with the prequel. 

Once again, we open with a man in a prison jumpsuit awaking inside a mysterious cube-shaped room, with no idea how he got there. He soon activates a trap and is gruesomely killed... The camera then pulls back and reveals two men, math genius Wynn and mechanic Dodd, observing the scenes on a monitor. Wynn and Dodd are technicians tasked with observing the activity within the cube. As a new batch of people awaken inside, Wynn becomes attached to one of the new test subjects. The two workers soon begin to question the motives of their mysterious employers and wonder if even they are safe from their traps. 

Part of what made the original “Cube” so intriguing was the mysteries its premise hinted at. We didn't know who built the cube, what its purpose was, or where or why the people inside were there. Where the original only left the viewer with ideas, “Cube 2” at least suggested some answers. “Cube Zero” gives us our most defined peek at the movies' universe yet. It reveals that the Cube program is happening in some sort of futuristic dystopia, where soldiers are implanted with microchips, dreams can be recorded to CD-ROM, and some sort of authoritarian government rules the world. The people trapped inside the cube are revealed to be political prisoners, their memories wiped before being dropped into this nightmarish scenario. And there's no actual escape from it, as “Cube Zero” reveals that anyone who makes it out of the cube is simply killed afterwards anyway. 

“Cube Zero” at least attempts to maintain some of the original's ambiguity by leaving many questions, such as the exact purpose of the cube experiments or the government running it, to the imagination. Yet the answers the prequel provides are certainly a lot less interesting than the implications the first movie left us with. Yet even this is not the real reason “Cube Zero” pales in comparison to the original. Vincenzo Natali generated suspense in “Cube” because, no matter how simple the characters were, you cared about them. The people inside the maze in “Cube Zero” are not even given enough personality to classify as archetypes. They are vague outlines at best. This extends to Wynn and Dodd, who never come to life in any compelling ways. You simply don't care about any of the characters in “Cube Zero,” which makes it hard to care about anything that happens to them.

The reveal that the "Cube" series is set in some sort of sci-fi future is probably my least favorite here. I much prefer the suggestion that all of this nefarious shit was going on, right now, just under our noses. Setting the story in the future, or at least an alternate universe, removes the immediacy... It also opens things up to a seriously goofy streak. The film's heroine is introduced being pursued by soldiers with glowing green eyes and cube symbols tattooed on their foreheads. After Wynn goes into the cube himself to help save the people inside, the technician's boss enters the story. That would be a character named Jax, who has a screw stud for a left eye, and is played in a hideously campy fashion by Michael Riley. In its final act, “Cube Zero” has one of the prisoners taken over by the villains and becoming a super-strong zombie. That's the point any degree of subtly or seriousness the prequel had goes right out the window. We are in the land of cheesy bullshit now.

With so little to recommend about it, is there anything in “Cube Zero's” favor? Well, the movie does feature some pretty clever kill scenes. The opening scene has a prisoner stepping into a room where he's sprayed with a liquid. At first, he assumes it's simply water but soon realizes it's a corrosive acid of some sort. His skin slowly peeling off and his body reduced to a bloody pile of giblets is creatively gruesome. Other kills include a graphic burning sequence, a man cut apart by an intertwining series of garrotes, a flesh eating virus injected into the body, and a sound wave cannon that makes people explode. Eventually, even the traps get silly, as there's later a bunch of CGI lasers crackling through the air. It says a lot about “Cube Zero's” overall quality that gory death scenes is the only real interesting element it has, compared to the suspense and intrigue of the original. But it's something, I guess.

“Cube Zero” features a few shout-outs to the original and proves its prequel status by eventually connecting directly with the first film. Not in a way that's especially satisfying. And pretending this movie is a prologue to Natali's “Cube” would do nothing but cheapen the superior film. “Cube Zero” is, at the very, less insultingly dumb and pretentious than “Hypercube.” Ernie Barbarash would go on to make another direct-to-video sequel to a horror cult classic before directing some movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Good for him, I guess. As for the “Cube” franchise, Vincenzo Natali himself has attempted to get a sequel/remake called “Cubed” off the ground for several years. Meanwhile, out of the blue, a trailer for a Japanese remake – which looks almost like a shot-for-shot redo of the original – was released this year. So it seems the “Cube” legacy isn't over, even if the immediate follow-ups lacked much of what made the original special. As for “Cube Zero,” it's pretty much a dud. [5/10]