Cube Zero
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.50 You Save: $9.48 (63%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.47 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Cube Zero
Movie Review: See how the other side of the CUBE works.
Summary: 3 Stars
Also known as CUBE 3: ZERO (2004).
This is the third film in the CUBE film series. The first film,Cube (1998) was a popular favorite on the SCI-FI Channel. Followed by the sequel,Cube 2 - Hypercube (2002). This third film is actually considered a "prequel". The story is set before the CUBE (1998) storyline. However, to fully appreciate and enjoy the CUBE films, you should see CUBE (1998) first, then CUBE 2: HYPERCUBE (2002) and this this third film Cube Zero (2004).
Instead of the film starting off with a victim in a lighted room with trapdoors, the walls are solid metal. We are introduced to two men in a control room. On a tv monitor, they see kidnapped victims in a Cube room. Their demise is recorded and filed by Wynn (Zachary Bennett). The other control worker, Dodd (David Huband) is strict-by-the-book. he tells Wynn he should not look inside the files. Don't get involved. Just keep the video input on real-time. We discover that these two control men are also victims, but are allowed to work in this control room. Someone gives them food pills for dinner from an elevator door. Wynn is a whiz at chess. He can see all the moves in his head before he plays. Dodd becomes so uptight and bossy that Wynn tells him that his worry is from being scared that anytime he is going to wake up and find himself inside the Cube too.
This story gets more interesting all the time.
DVD includes: A 19-minute featurette, "Inside The Box: the making of Cube Zero", conceptual art, storyboard comparisons and a forgettable music video.
Movie Review: every puzzle has its beginning...
Summary: 3 Stars
Or is that "every nightmare has its pieces?" Pardon me if I confuse this latest installment in "kill-people-in-grisly-ways-as-punishment-for-things-they-don't-know-about" cinema, since "Cube Zero" is Saw-cut from that cloth. But unlike the first two "Cube" flicks, this straight-to-DVD creep-out allows us to see the drone bees that make the machine go "slice."
The film opens just like the first two, with a cube inmate getting offed in a particularly gruesome manner. Then you fade back to the two jump-suited worker ants that monitor and record all the fun. One is a "just-following-orders" old fart and the other is a younger "what's-it-all-mean" puzzle-solving genius.
Before you can say "that could be me in there," young idealist rushes into the cube itself to try and save a potentially innocent prisoner from a fate worse than pointless sequels. Then down comes a Government over-the-top sadist wacko and his two lackeys, and soon Mr. "Just Following Orders" gets a too-late conscious and our cute female prisoner and the young know-it-all are playing beat the clock to escape.
Fortunately, the script is plausible and no-one tries too hard to make any deep cultural significance out of all this. That means "Cube Zero" at least betters "Hyper-Cube" as much as it spools out its running time with a minimum of WTF moments (as opposed to "Saw." Which I thought the first "Cube" writers should have been calling their lawyers over).
But on that note, one supposes that this little cheapie will gain a cult following (along with the first two "Cube" features). And "Saw 2" will pack them in with the same kind of sadistic mayhem.
Worth a rental.
Movie Review: More traps but weak plot
Summary: 3 Stars
Much better than Cube 2:Hypercube, Cube Zero still falls flat in comparison to the low budget original, Cube. The more Cube movies they try to make, the more I begin to believe that Cube was a one-trick-pony that has already had its day in the sun.
Cube Zero is a supposed prequel to the happenings in the original Cube, showing us the observers of the victims trapped inside the cube. One of the observers, Eric (Zachary Bennett) suddenly develops a conscious when he discovers that one of the victims is inside the cube involuntarily. Naturally, since she is a pretty woman and a mother, Eric decides to enter the cube and rescue her.
That's about all there is to the plot. The dialogue is weak, stilted, and a bit repetitive, but the traps are numerous and cool. If your only complaint with Hypercube was the lack of traps then you will like Cube Zero much better, but there is no study of human nature in this prequel as there was in the original, the one point that made Cube fascinating outside of the gory messes the traps left behind.
My recommendation is to pick up the original Cube first, to see the best version first and to get an idea of the plot behind putting people inside the Cube, and what the Cube really is. Then watch Hypercube and Cube Zero to judge for yourself. My opinion, Cube is a 'Buy', Hypercube and Cube Zero are 'Rents'. Enjoy!
Movie Review: So much unrealized potential
Summary: 3 Stars
CUBE was pretty darn good. CUBE 2 was a lesser movie, but was faithful enough to the premise and allowed us a peek outside the cube at who or what might have been pulling the strings.
CUBE ZERO offers us more outside-the-cube looks, but in a very unsatisfying way. And the character Jax, a disfigured middle-manager type who runs roughshod over the technicians monitoring and (in some case) manipulating activity in the cube, is played WAY too broadly and looks too damn silly to be effective.
I wasn't a huge fan of CUBE 2 but I liked what the ending hinted at: a large corporate and military entity with unethical evil on their minds. CUBE ZERO tries to have some degree of ominousness to it, but it just doesn't play out well enough.
If this is the direction the series is heading, they should stop now.
Movie Review: ANYONE FOR ROCKY XXI?
Summary: 3 Stars
The people trapped inside of building having to escape by figuring out puzzles has become overdone. Frankly I am a bit burned out by it all, I stopped watching Saw movies at IV because it got so bad and so far from the original, although not as bad as Halloween 3, which had nothing to do with the first two movies other than the fact it was Halloween.
What is different about this movie which made it tolerable to watch was that it concentrated on the technicians who were operating the cube rather than the blood and guts aspect of people getting killed in imaginative fashion, although it does have some of that.
The bad guy with the fake eye was almost cartoonish. If you sat through the other two movies and liked them, you know you are going to watch this one anyway, so why are you reading the reviews?