Film Analysis of Cube

Cube is a low budget Canadian film made in 1997. This film is intertextual to saw and many suggest this film is where saw got the idea from. The plot is of a group of people who wake up in a cube that has a door In each side with joining rooms.
The opening scene is a close up of an eye opening, as if waking up. There is then an establishing shot which reveals the location which appears to be a cube. The man however continues on without caution to different room and gets sliced into piece. The title then comes up on the screen in a mathematical looking font which suggests some element of maths in the film.



you are then introduced to the rest of the character who wake up without a clue how they got there. They shortly discover they are trapped in a maze of cube shaped rooms with no food or water, this means they must escape before they run out of energy to carry on. They shortly discover with the death of the first character that some of the rooms are boobie trapped.

The film is extremely claustrophobic and traps both the character and the viewer in the cube for the whole duration of the movie. I feel the film engages the viewer perfectly by keeping them interested throughout the film by adding new developments to keep the viewer interested. But of course the 5 characters try to figure out why they are there and what the purpose of the cube is. Throughout the film you start to find out why each of the people may have been placed in the cube. For example the young girl is a maths genius so she was placed in the cube to figure out the numbers on each of the doors to solve the puzzle. There is also a doctor and a police man, the police man has a temper and by the end of the film becomes very dangerous which adds more drama to the story line. Another character is what seems to be an autistic guy who acts very odd, who up until the end seemingly serves no purpose. But he does in fact help an awful lot as he understands maths questions at an astronomical level of intelligence as many autistic people do find. And lastly there is the guy who somewhat helped make the cube but does not seem to know anything about why they are there, perhaps he is there to be punished for helping make it, or s it completely random afterall?

What I find most interesting about the film is how within these 5 random ‘strangers’ propps charector types come into play, as the risk of death heightens and they start to fend for their lives they all show there true selves. Much like the many sides to the cube there also seems to be many sides to the characters. Such as Quentin the police officer at first he seems to be strong, courageous and a born leader who seems to be helping the rest of them, but as the pressure builds he looses his temper and the audience begin the despise him and he become the villan. Here is a run down how I see it, of how propps charector types come into play.

Quentin becomes the villan because he is evil and kills the other ‘good’ characters. He does however fall at the end.

Leaven becomes the helper as she is good at maths so she is solving the equation in each room to get them out.
The princess could in fact act as the outside world; it is the goal that they are all aiming for.

The donor is worth as he offers information about the cube as he helped build it.

The hero turns out to be Kazan as he is the one who saves all the other character and gets them to the exit and he is also the only one who survives.

Quentin could also act as a false hero as he tries to be in charge o everyone and seem could when in fact he is only looking after himself.

The film mainly focuses on character development as the entire film is this set of characters in the cube finding a way out.

Some scenes become quite gripping as you start to gain a personal relationship with one of the characters making you want her to survive, as said by kats and blummers if you create a personal relationship/ identification with a character you are more likely to gain from the text as you will be rooting for this character to survive in this case.

In the end of the film the character that stayed calm and followed orders throughout survived meaning he passed the test. It truly was a test to work together as it was not a trick it was possible for every one of those people to survive.