The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Cube (1997), directed by Vincenzo Natali

     The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Trapped In A Box", by No Doubt

     Yeah, vampires are scary, and zombies aren’t very nice, but there’s one thing that puts every movie monster in the world to shame: humans. As scary as those monsters can be, they are still fictional after all, and humans are more or less real. The fear of our fellow man has guided the development of the whole of civilization, caused wars, lead to racism, classism and has shaped our pop culture accordingly. Look at how money money has been made on the true crime and slasher genres, which is based entirely around the premise of people killing other people. Sure, if you go around thinking everyone around is trying to murder you at all times you’re either a severe paranoiac or a Republican, but if the idea wasn’t at least somewhat believable than it wouldn’t be successful. Who knows what people are capable of when pushed to their limits?

      The premise of Cube is a simplistic but highly effective one. 7 people awake to find themselves in strange color coded rooms, with no memory of how they ended up there. Each wall of each room has hatches that enter into other rooms, which also open into other rooms, forming a gigantic, constantly shifting cube. Not only that, but some of the rooms are rigged with various deadly traps, which ensure an instant and painful death for whatever poor bastard happens to stumble into it. Who put these people in this fantastical death trap? What horrible crime could they have done that would warrant such a punishment? None of that matters. The only hope these prisoners have to avoid a slow, painful death by starvation and dehydration is to band together and escape the cube, and they’ll soon find out that this is going to be harder than anyone ever thought.

      I don’t want to seem like I’m blowing smoke up Vincenzo Natali’s ass, but Cube is an amazingly effective horror/thriller film. The atmosphere of this film is fantastic, with a level of tension that builds and builds until it becomes almost suffocating. There is no outside force, no Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger waiting to kill everyone except the hot chick so that we as an audience can direct our fear towards some monstrous creature. It’s a couple of people locked in a room (in a sense) , and it’s one of the most of the most suspenseful films I’ve seen in a while. If that’s not a recommendation to place Cube in your Halloween watch queue, I don’t know what is.