Cube

Cube is one of those wondrous films that feature nobody you have ever heard of and develop from a simple idea and visual.

Six people that have seemingly nothing in common wake up entrapped in cubic rooms. Each room has portals - one in the middle of each side - that leads into another cubic room. They have no recollection of how they got there and - after some deliberation - venture on together to look for a way out.

Only trouble is that any given new cube/room could hold a deadly trap - and quite wonderful they are. You could be sliced into pieces, you could take a load of acid in the face, the room could turn into an iron maiden. At first, they test for traps by use of their shoes. Eventually, the figure out that each room has a unique set of nine-digit numbers and deduct that whether or not the adjoining room holds a trap can be figured out through the number based on whether it is a prime number or not.

Thankfully, one of the six is a maths wiz. But once the prime number theory fails them they have to adapt their search by a new numeric parameter. Here another of the group comes into play. One young, mentally challenged man, who was previously regarded as a burden to the group, can calculate impossile problems in his head in no time.

As the search for an exit goes on, people get more and more agitated and turn on each other. Through trial and error they finally do figure out a way to make it out again, by being in the right room at the right time. See, it turns out that the rooms shift and the numbers not only include coordinates but also a time frame (it is all very mathematical and way above my head).

So simple, yet so effective.

8/10

Small Town Murder Songs

In a small Mennonite farming town a murder occurs. Local policeman Walter, whose violent past is no secret to the community, is one of the people working the case. The suspect is his ex-girlfriend's new lover and over the course of the investigation, Walter struggles to keep his newly found composure.

The film is not so much about who killed the girl - with only one suspect and a witness putting him in the same location with the victim the night of the murder - but more about everyone's, especially Walter's, reaction to the tragedy that has befallen this quiet town.

Peter Storemare in the lead role is absolutely wonderful. The film's look borrows from the Coen brothers. The story, however, has all the dark of a Coen mystery without any comic relief. And the soundtrack is absolutely wonderful (never heard of Bruce Peninsula before, but went right onto iTunes to download the album).

I like this a lot.

8/10

Pontypool

You may have noticed by now that I watch a lot of horror films. In recent years I came across quite a few interesting ones (as in: they do not follow the apparent standard formula many genre films do) and a lot of those are Canadian products.

Canada gave us some real gems in that regard. The Cube series, the Ginger Snaps series, The Brood, or the classic Black Christmas to name a few.

With Pontypool, we get a zombie flick in which you don't actually see much of the zombies. As an avid reader using my imaginagion to draw up pictures of people, places, scenes is not a new concept. In films, however, rarely anything is left to you. What a breath of fresh air to watch a film that does not present bite-sized pieces of familiar patterns.

Almost the entire film takes place inside a small town radio station, where talk show host Grant Mazzy and his crew of two get disturbing reports about mobs going rampant all over town. Throughout the whole film we, the viewers, know as much or little as the characters in the film. We learn what is happening outside from frantic phone calls.

Eventually, the zombies reach the station, as does one Dr. Mendez, who seams to have had an unknowing hand in starting the outbreak. Even the infection that produces the zombies is out of the horror movie norm. What we see of the outside crowd is mostly hands and, later, shapes through dirty, bloody glass. The epidemic does affect one of the women working for the radio station and we do get to see how the affected act. In full detail.

This film is very, very interesting.

8/10