10 Underappreciated 90s Thrillers You Must Watch

Cube is a film with no hiding places; both for the characters it concerns and for the film-maker.

It’s a low budget sci-fi thriller which knows its limitations. Several strangers, to themselves and us, awaken in a number of coloured, cubic rooms. They quickly find out that the rooms are interconnected and that some are extremely dangerous. Eventually, the trapped strangers who survive long enough find each other and collectively try to unlock the secrets of their prison and ultimately their escape.

The characters all hold interest for the viewer, although some can be annoyingly clichéd at times; others surprise you later in the movie. In terms of scripting and performance there is certainly room for improvement. But, the simple and superb premise of Cube makes it unmissable.

It does exactly what it should do, in its one room type setting it ramps up the tension in the characters and makes you feel their claustrophobia. When the tension explodes into violence and argument it does so at key times and with consequences that always drive the narrative forward.

Cube feels like a smarter predecessor to films like Saw, the underlying popularity of that franchise shows there is a clear path to success for this type of story. For a little more budget or if it came along at a different time then Cube may have been a major hit.