Cube

1997
The Feature Film Project
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Length: 90 min.
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 19 February

In the hands of a competent director and screenwriter, Cube might have been a big success. As it is, the film is a rather frustrating example of a great idea squandered by a pathetic script, worse dialogue and some of the most awful acting these eyes have ever seen. The production design, cinematography and story are good, though, and the film is tense and effective at building suspense.

But Natali is a writer who appears to have not read anything other than a discount screenwriting 101 book, explaining things that should be left unsaid (the mind-numbingly stupid explanation of the cube's origin), jerking back and forth between fluid action and scenes of stagey and cliched character development/confrontation, and inserting unnecessarily graphic violence into the proceedings (less would have been so much more).

The whole idea of the film is fascinating, and so much gold could have been mined from it, but when it ends, all you can do is wish that the project had been given to a better filmmaker.