Yes, 5 out of 10. It's a math puzzle where the wrong answer comes with a trap, and the people trapped with you are worse.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
5 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Medium
You'll think about it every time you walk into a small room with several doors.
DOG
Dog: fine
fine, no dog dies.
Ruling: Good for anyone who likes puzzles and can handle some mean traps in a tense, bleak setting.
Cube runs ninety minutes, and nearly all of them take place in a maze of rooms with hatches. A group of strangers is trapped inside it, and a few of them are better at arithmetic than at getting along.
The premise, briefly
Strangers find themselves in a huge maze of rooms, some of them rigged with traps, and have to work out the numbers on the hatches to find the way out.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Quentin stabs Leaven and Worth. Worth holds him in the exit doorway until the bridge moves and tears him in half. Leaven and Worth die of their wounds, and only Kazan walks out into the light.
The scene you're dreading
The opening, right at the start: Alderson steps into a room with a hidden wire trap that cuts his body into cube-shaped pieces. It happens before any of the main characters appear.
The dog
No dog dies in Cube.
It is a claustrophobic puzzle movie with several violent deaths, and Quentin does more damage than most of the traps.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
Seven strangers and a lot of hatches
A man named Alderson wakes up in a room with a hatch in every wall and the floor. This is the scene people dread most, and it comes right at the start, before any of the main characters appear. He enters the next room and a hidden wire trap cuts his body into cube-shaped pieces. After that, five other people turn up in a room together: Quentin, Rennes, Worth, Leaven and Holloway. Quentin warns them that he has spotted traps behind a few of the hatches. Leaven notices that every hatch has a plate with three sets of numbers on it. Rennes has a theory that traps are set off by detectors, so he throws his boot into a room to test it. That works for motion and pressure sensors. Then he walks into a room where it doesn't, and an acid trap kills him. The others leave his body in the room behind it.
Quentin thinks everyone was picked to be there. Leaven suggests that any room whose plate holds a prime number is a trap. The group also finds Kazan, a mentally disabled man, and Holloway insists they bring him along. Leaven's idea turns out to be wrong, and Quentin comes close to being sliced by razor wires. The group argues, and Worth tells Quentin that he was hired to design the outer shell of the structure. He guesses that nobody built the Cube on purpose and that a bureaucracy made it by accident and forgot why. In his view they were put inside to justify its existence.
Quentin does not handle stress well
From Worth's knowledge of the outside size, Leaven works out that the Cube holds 17,576 rooms and one extra bridge room, which links to the shell and so to the exit. She guesses that the numbers on the plates are room coordinates. The group heads for the edge and finds that every room there is a trap. They get through a room with a spiked wall that reacts to sound, though Kazan yells at the last second and Quentin nearly gets skewered. Quentin slaps Holloway after she says his anger is why his wife left him. At the edge, there is no exit. Holloway tries to swing across to the shell using a rope she has tied from clothes. The Cube shudders and the rope slips. Quentin catches the rope and pulls her up, and then he lets her fall on purpose and tells the others she slipped. Later he carries a sleeping Leaven into another room to abandon Kazan and Worth, and Worth follows and fights him.
The rooms move
Quentin throws Worth down a hatch into a room that holds Rennes's corpse, and it looks like the group has been going in circles. Worth starts laughing, then realizes the room where Rennes died has moved to the edge of the maze. The rooms are shifting, and eventually they will line up with the exit. Leaven works out that traps are marked by powers of prime numbers, not by plain primes. Kazan turns out to be a savant who can factor numbers in his head. Leaven and Kazan lead the group toward the bridge. Worth traps Quentin in a hatch. When Quentin gets loose and attacks, Worth drops him through another hatch by opening it from the room beneath. Everyone except Quentin reaches the bridge and opens the final hatch, which shows a bright light.
The ending, explained
Quentin catches up and uses a detached door lever to stab Leaven and Worth. As he goes after Kazan toward the exit, Worth grabs his legs and holds him in the bridge doorway. The bridge moves back into the Cube and tears Quentin in half. Worth crawls over to Leaven as he bleeds out too, so both of them die in the bridge. Kazan, the only survivor, wanders out into the light. Holloway, Rennes and Alderson were already dead by then. Worth's guess is that a bureaucracy built the Cube by accident and forgot why.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Cube scary?
Yes, Cube is a 5 out of 10, and the dread lasts about a night. It has some jump scares, violent deaths, and a claustrophobic set where the fear comes from not knowing which room is safe.
How does Cube end?
Quentin stabs Leaven and Worth, then Worth holds him in the exit doorway so the bridge tears him in half. Leaven and Worth both die, and Kazan walks out into the light alone.
Does the dog die in Cube?
No dog dies in Cube.
Is there a post-credits scene in Cube?
No. Cube has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
What are the numbers on the hatches in Cube?
In Cube, Leaven figures the numbers on each hatch may be room coordinates. She first guesses that prime numbers mark traps, then works out that traps are marked by powers of prime numbers.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of Cube is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
Cube is ninety minutes of checking numbers before opening a door. Install Scaredy Cat and it blurs horror before you see it, so you can skip the rooms.
