“If you don’t want to die, move.”

Justin’s rating: Put this back in a box and return to sender

Justin’s review: So this caught me off-guard — I just learned the other day that the Japanese did a remake of the classic ’97 Canadian scifi/horror flick Cube. Usually these adaptations work the other way around, but hey, it’s a new Cube (ostensibly a remake)!

If you’ve seen the original or any of the sequels, you know the basic premise: A bunch of people wake up in a vast structure made out of identical cube-shaped rooms with doors on all six sides. Some of the rooms contain deadly traps, some are safe, the doors have a series of numbers on them, everyone has secrets, and the mystery of the structure hovers over all. Oh, and the rooms seem to move once in a while, giving hope that there might be a way to escape.

These Japanese characters are rightfully freaked out at the lack of information and the lurking death traps. But some show some ingenuity, using the ol’ shoe-on-a-string trick to test rooms before they enter. Staying on the move also seems important, since holing up in a single room won’t be safe forever.

The longer runtime (about 18 minutes more than the original) is invested in giving the characters flashbacks and more conversations. Alas, none of this is interesting because this is a bland bunch (compared to the convicts of the 1997 film). There’s also a weird, probably Japanese-specific tension between the generations.

Knowing Japanese horror, I really expected this remake to be incredibly disturbing and grisly, but it’s actually less so than the original. I also expected for there to be a new twist or inventiveness. But no, this version is a very similar movie to its ancestor — maybe a little slicker, a little longer, and completely in Japanese, but it goes through the same beats.

And that’s the main problem that plagued the two sequels to Cube as well: Nobody can seem to come up with an interesting way to iterate on the original. Maybe that’s proof that it should’ve been a one-off, standalone flick.

So that’s my verdict: See (and love) the first Cube… and then let it go. Don’t go scrounging through the other three films hoping that great mysteries will be solved or the filmmakers will come up with more creative twists and turns. I’ve been there and I can tell you, it’s not going to happen.

Intermission!

• His body’s been… cubed *rimshot*
• Every room has so many squares. I think they’re really running this concept into the ground.
• The rooms moving is unsettling
• Getting to the door in the ceiling takes some serious arm strength
• “This isn’t a rescue. We woke up in here too.”
• The spinning blade room is nifty with some lighting tricks
• The prime number rule