Cube (film)

Cube is a 1997 Canadian science fiction psychological horror independent film, directed and co-written by Vincenzo Natali. The film was a successful product of the Canadian Film Centre's First Feature Project.

The film follows Quentin, a former cop, leading a group of people through cube-shaped rooms, with some rigged with various traps. However, some go insane, and threaten the lives of everyone.

During its theatrical release, Cube divided critics, with mostly favorable reviews, out of mixed or negative reviews, and has since gained a cult following. The film spawned a franchise of films, and a remake is currently in development at Lionsgate.

Plot

A man named Alderson awakens in a cube-shaped room with a hatch in each wall, the ceiling and the floor, each of which leads to other cube-shaped rooms, identical except for their color. He enters an orange room and, without warning, is killed by a trap. In another such room, five people – Quentin, Worth, Holloway, Rennes, and Leaven – meet. None of them knows where they are or how they got there. Quentin informs the others that some rooms contain traps, which he learned by nearly being killed by one. Rennes assumes each trap is triggered by a motion detector and tests each room by throwing one of his boots in first. Leaven notices numbers inscribed in the passageways between rooms. Quentin, a policeman, recognizes Rennes as "the Wren", an escape artist renowned for getting out of jails. After declaring one room trap-free, Rennes enters and is killed when he is sprayed with acid. The others realize that there are different kinds of detectors, and Quentin deduces that this trap was triggered by heat.

Ice cube

An ice cube is a small, roughly cube-shaped piece of ice (frozen water), conventionally used to cool beverages. Ice cubes are sometimes preferred over crushed ice because they melt more slowly; they are standard in mixed drinks that call for ice, in which case the drink is said to be "on the rocks."

Origin

American physician and humanitarian John Gorrie built a refrigerator in 1844 with the purpose of cooling air. His refrigerator produced ice which he hung from the ceiling in a basin. Gorrie can be considered the creator of ice cubes, but his aim was not to cool drinks: he used the ice to lower the ambient room temperature. During his time, a dominant idea was that bad air quality caused disease. Therefore, in order to help treat sickness, he pushed for the draining of swamps and the cooling of sickrooms.

Methods of production

Ice cubes are produced domestically by filling an ice cube tray with water and placing it in a freezer. Many freezers also come equipped with an icemaker, which produces ice cubes automatically and stores them in a bin from which they can be dispensed directly into a glass.