Given the times that we’ve found ourselves in, it’s no surprise that many of us have turned to horror as a way to cope, process, or simply escape for two hours from the current politically-charged world. What horror is so good at doing is highlighting the human aspects of survival. When the status quo is in danger, how do the characters react? This question has been asked repeatedly in horror films, being handled best in small, intimate settings that make for intriguing character studies. One such example is Cube, a low-budget Canadian SF/horror film directed in 1997 by Vincenzo Natali (who most recently directed In the Tall Grass).
Check out the trailer for Cube here:
For those unfamiliar with this film, Cube follows a group of six people who find themselves in a cube-shaped prison, made up of thousands of interlocking rooms, also shaped like cubes. These strangers must work together to escape the cube—no easy task, as some of the rooms are rigged with lethal booby traps. Which rooms the traps are in is determined by complex mathematics. Cube is less interested in providing gory thrills – though it does provide some of those toward its beginning – and more interested in seeing how its characters work together – or, in some cases, alienate themselves.
In the Cube
Cube’s characters start off as not particularly complicated. They were all presumably chosen to be trapped in the cube because of the roles they played in society, and they begin their time in the cube attempting to stick to those roles. Unfortunately for some of them, the authority they had out in the world does not cross over into the cube. Perhaps the best example of this is shown through the death of the character Rennes (Wayne Robson), a prison escape artist. The characters all believe that his expertise will help them, but Rennes is the first in their party to die. However, in other characters’ cases, the lack of authority they have on the outside becomes reversed in the cube. For example, the character Leaven (Nicole de Boer) is a university student studying mathematics who refers to herself as “nothing” when asked to introduce herself. However, her mathematical skills end up being an immense help to the group; the calculations she is able to perform help them avoid the dangerous rooms in the cube. Leaven, despite her talents, does not take on a leadership role, however. That role goes to the film’s ostensible protagonist, Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint).
Leaven (Nicole de Boer) and Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint)
One of the first things that the characters and audience learn about Quentin is that he is a policeman. He tells this to an anxious Leaven in an attempt to reassure her that he has her best interests at heart. Quentin appears to be a natural leader with a protective instinct that, at times, borders on the parental, especially where Leaven is concerned. Given that he mentioned he had children who stayed with his ex-wife when they divorced, Quentin appears to be someone worthy of sympathy: he seems a good man, upholding the values of the police force – “to serve and protect” – which leads him to advocate for a practical approach to finding a way out rather than asking existential questions about why they’re trapped.
Quentin finds his foil in Worth (David Hewlett), a cynic who had a hand in building the cube. Worth knows that it’s a pointless creation that is only used because nobody wants to admit that it has no purpose. Worth’s role as a passive observer who occasionally graces the room with jaded commentary prompts Quentin to snap, “Not all of us have the luxury of playing nihilist.” Worth responds with, “Not all of us are conceited enough to play hero.” And, just like that, the audience is left to question Quentin’s motives. He wants to escape, but he also likes the taste of control.
Both horror and crime fiction are interested in the containment of what appears to be an outside force infringing on the status quo, but in Cube, evil comes from the status quo itself. The cube is a symptom of a corrupt capitalist system, built by people like Worth who were alienated from the other architects working on it, and who didn’t question its purpose because they were being paid well. Even in an environment where it seems like the status quo no longer applies, it is still holding people prisoner. This reading lends a cynical edge to the newfound sense of agency characters like Leaven find in the cube: she is empowered because she is no longer a student, but a worker whose abilities are necessary for survival. In spite of being a prisoner himself, it is Quentin who still finds a way to enforce a form of the status quo by favoring those whose expertise raises the likelihood regarding his chances of escape. As a policeman, Quentin’s job is to keep order and ensure everyone makes it out alive – but he does so by being domineering and by casting aside those he considers not useful, not ideal workers.
Again, it is Worth who notices this fact about Quentin after the latter reaches a moral turning point: he kills Dr. Holloway (Nicky Guadagni), who, aside from being paranoid and therefore not particularly helpful to the group (in Quentin’s mind), had called him out on his misogyny and violent tendencies – and the audience is inclined to believe her accusation that Quentin’s wife left him because of those tendencies. Cube’s characters are all named after prisons, with Quentin being named after the infamously brutal San Quentin State Prison in California. With this in mind, it is really no surprise that Quentin ends up becoming the villain of the film. Even if viewers did not catch on to it, the image of Quentin first entering the main room with blood on his hands should be our first clue that he is not the hero he believes he is.
Some analyses of Cube see Quentin as falling into a stereotype of black male aggression, but there are other ways to view him – specifically, by the label he gives himself, the “policeman.” Quentin deconstructs the “heroic cop” narrative he is such a believer in, leaving a trail of blood in his wake as he turns on the other members of the group. In the end, it is a dying Worth who kills Quentin. Nobody is a hero in Cube – there are those who are loyal to the corrupt status quo, continuing its violence in an environment where they will be unchecked, and those who realize its flaws and work to break away from it.
You can stream Cube on Amazon #ad:
Hayley Dietrich is a rising senior at Kenyon College, where she studies English and Creative Writing. Her favorite subgenres of horror are creature features and, horror-noir. She has also written about Candyman as horror noir and about deconstructive nostalgia in Adam Cesare’s novel Clown in a Cornfield for Horror Homeroom.
Related: Check out Dawn Keetley’s piece on a little-known film, Circle (2015), “game horror,” and lifeboat ethics. Cube gets a mention.
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