Cube (1997)

(In theaters, September 1998) The traditional cliché about cheap (or Canadian, which this movie is) Science-Fiction is that due to budget restrictions, you usually end up with a few actors, fewer sets and even fewer special effects. Cube ends up exemplifying this by having seven actors, less that two sets and a Very Big Light. (It was shot for $300,000 in twenty days in a Toronto warehouse) Even more surprising, it almost works. The script is pretty bad (ordinary dialogue, stock characters do stupid things for unknown reasons, lousy logic, unlikely coincidences, etc…) but the film is well-done, and starts off with an intriguing premise. Unfortunately, it belongs to the dark-and-dreary school of pseudo-artistic SF, so don’t expect to be uplifted by this. Not entirely unpleasant, no, but far from being very good. Spoiler – Avoid – Spoiler: I really hate it when the idiot survives and the only sympathetic characters in the cast all die just as the Happy Ending is dangled in front of our nose. “and then they all die” is not artistically superior to a happy ending. Cripes.