Cube Zero

Cube Zero (2004) is a science-fiction thriller you can watch online on iFILM. It's the prequel to the cult favorite Cube, tracing how the lethal machine of endless booby-trapped rooms came to be.

This time the camera pulls back from the maze to the control room, where technicians watch the prisoners die. Young engineer Eric Wynn (Zachary Bennett) logs the deaths on his monitors day after day and asks no questions — until he spots a woman among the doomed who has no memory of what she did to land there. Eric breaks protocol and climbs into the Cube himself, into rooms that can shred, burn, or dissolve a body in a heartbeat.

Canadian director Ernie Barbarash made the cheapest entry in the trilogy, but also the one that finally hints at who built the thing and why. There's more bureaucratic absurdity and Orwellian paranoia here than in the original, plus a grotesque sadist of an overseer. Franchise fans should see it for the answers it offers; newcomers are better off starting with the first film. Stream Cube Zero (2004) online on iFILM.