If you’ve been anywhere near genre television in the last ten years or so, chances are you’ve run into Vincenzo Natali at some point
The Canadian director has had a hand in pretty much every major piece of horror, fantasy, or sci-fi TV you can think of in the last decade: from Hannibal to American Gods to Orphan Black to Hemlock Grove – The Strain, Westworld, Cabinet of Curiosities, The Stand, the lot. And I totally understand why – he’s one of the most stylistically distinct genre directors out there, and his mark on a show is always one I welcome a chance to indulge in.
But today, instead of his TV work, I’d like to talk a little about Natali’s debut feature, the 1997 cult sci-fi horror classic Cube.
Cube, a sort of proto-escape-room slasher, is both exceptionally high in concept and really simple: a group of people find themselves trapped in a series of interconnected cubes, and have to navigate their way through their prison, avoiding traps and decoding puzzles as the tension mounts and inter-personal problems start to get the better of them.
An initial flop on it’s release in Canada, Cube went on to become a major cult hit, eventually spawning the hysterically-named Cube 2: Hypercube and prequel Cube Zero (and an Japanese remake). And it’s always been a film I’ve had a huge soft spot for, because, really, it’s proof that a great concept and an innovative director can allow a movie to succeed despite the obstacles in its way.
And obstacles there are here, not just within the titular Cubes: Natali was working with a restricted budget, and most of it seemed to go on designing the iconic and instantly-memorable setting itself. The ensemble cast swerves between “sort of alright” and “comically bad”; the script does them no favours. There was one day of script rehearsal before shooting began, and it was shot in just a few weeks. There’s so much going against it, and yet, there’s something undeniably brilliant about how Cube comes together.
Part of it, as I mentioned, is the setting – there’s something timelessly sterile about the Cube, designed by David W. Pravica, and the intricate, functional puzzles within. It’s a far cry from Saw’s dingy bathroom or Hostel’s dingy, uh, Hostel setting – there’s something almost laboratory-like about the Cube, something that gives this overarching, unsettling sense that someone has done this for a reason. Natali’s direction, even at this early point in his career, has such a unique, precise, surreal quality to it that contrasts with the sterility of the Cube setting in an unnerving way; you can clearly see the nascent version of his more developed style, and it’s such a treat, particularly if you enjoyed his work in Hannibal (and I will go ahead and assume you did).
And the slasher elements of the setting are just really cool, too. The superb razor wire trap that opens the movie has rightly earned a place in horror history, but the sound-activated trap later in the movie is the one that always stands out to me – genuinely tense, it’s a sequence that has you holding your breath as much as the characters. Moving from cube to cube, it’s got a great sense of forward momentum, and a satisfying problem-solving central throughline that gives everything a more grounded, practical feel.
Perhaps the best thing about Cube is the fact that Natali doesn’t try to explain himself. In initial drafts of the script, there was an expanded universe outside the Cube, but it was the right choice to cut all of that – a movie of this scope needs to keep focus tight, and, frankly, real explanation for what’s going on here isn’t something we need. What matters is the Cube, what happens within it, and how it impacts the people who are trapped there. The lack of background gives it the feel of a really great anthology horror episode, a one-off pulpy story that’s unconcerned with setting anything up for future storytelling within this universe (and, if Hypercube is anything to go by, they should have stuck with that).
Cube was re-mastered as part of a program to preserve classic Canadian cinema a couple of years ago, and, watching it again, I can totally see why. It’s a stark, striking, and ambitious sci-fi horror, even despite the obvious limitations of the script and actors, and proof of what fantastic work Natali would do in genre storytelling in the years to come.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Rotten Tomatos)
No But Listen 