Cube Zero

Third instalment in the ‘Cube’ sci-fi horror series, which began with Vincenzo Natali’s ‘Cube’ in 1997 and proceeded with Andrzej Sekula’s ‘Cube 2: Hypercube’ in 2002. In this prequel to the first film, first-time writer/director Ernie Barbarash provides detailed explanations that fans of the first two films might be puzzling over. Zachary Bennett stars as Eric Wynn, a young and brilliant Cube technician who finds himself in a dilemma when an innocent young woman, Cassandra Rains (Stephanie Moore) becomes imprisoned in one of the Cube’s rooms.
Following the grisly 1997 Cube and its 2002 sequel, Cube 2: Hypercube, Cube Zero stretches the original’s The Twilight Zone-like, strangers-in-a-box theme a little thin. Fortunately, there’s a difference this time. The hero is not just another disoriented captive of the Cube’s interconnected–often lethal–rooms, but rather a geek named Eric (Zachary Bennett) who sits in a control station wrestling with his conscience about inflicting misery on innocent people. Taking orders over the phone from some almighty, unknown power in a distant office, Eric reaches a breaking point and enters the maze himself, intent on helping a woman (Stephanie Moore) who doubts his motives. The existential bent of the prior films becomes even more Kafkaesque this time with the arrival of a white-collar team of tormentors, bureaucratic tyrants who can’t or won’t explain the point of the Cube. Imaginative writer-director Ernie Barbarash rescues what might have been a tedious formula flick. –Tom Keogh