{Disarmed} The tube : a perfect demonstration of why the idea of ​​ Cube continues to be fascinating to us

'El Tubo', a French production that attracted attention in Sitges a couple of years ago - it was nominated for a jury award in its section - and which is now reaching Spanish cinemas, cannot avoid comparisons with 'Cube', Vincenzo Natali's marvelous sci-fi horror miniature from 1997. It is completely logical: the differences are abundant (almost a quarter of a century has passed, after all), but the similarities are also remarkable.

Both films are based on a person (or group of people, in 'Cube') locked in an environment as claustrophobic as it is futuristic . A completely artificial light illuminates the rooms through which they pass, avoiding ridiculously lethal dangers. They will have to find a logic in the structure of this trap and, above all, and here is the most striking resemblance, find out how they got there.

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Although 'The tube' has its own personality, as we will see, it is in that aspect where it definitely falls below Natali's film. The resolution of 'Cube' was enigmatic but satisfying (in fact, it spawned a remarkable sequel, the even more wacky 'Cube 2: Hypercube'). Here, the director and screenwriter Mathieu Turi also plays the riddle and the unanswered questions , but gives more clues about what the protagonist does in this strange structure, and it is not satisfactory. The final fifteen minutes, visually very attractive, are nevertheless disappointing from the point of view of the plot.

The journey there, however, is absolutely feverish and hectic: the traps also drink something from the 'Saw' saga due to their sophistication and chiripitiflautic mechanics (blades, torches, moving walls, floods), and a time limit is added to this. , of which the protagonist is successively informed, a wonderful Gaia Weiss -properly stressed but always decisive-. In addition, 'The tube' adds another ingredient to the equation that makes the film an especially interesting element.

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Video games that never existed

Turi combines elements stolen from the mechanics of video games, turning 'The Tube' into a kind of perfect adaptation of a game that does not exist. But even if it does not exist, its development is perfectly recognizable: the Game Over situation, the logic to solve puzzles and find paths (absolutely absurd under normal circumstances, but completely common in video games), the reasoning to deduce the workings of traps and overcome them ... there is even a moment in which the protagonist mentally times the cycles of appearance of a blade , as in a platform game.

The theme of 'The tube' is not the usual one in a movie-type that adapts a video game (that is, here there are neither futuristic coliseums, nor virtual worlds, nor artificial intelligences testing humans like guinea pigs ), but the resource works and on everything, save time. It gives logic (that of a video game, but logic after all) to the whole and makes it plausible within its limits.

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The dressing with elements that seem to be taken from a science fiction magazine of the eighties type 'Metal Hurlant' end up balancing a film whose greatest virtue is precisely knowing how to choose the precise elements of video games and references like 'Cube' to go Straight to the point. In 'El Tubo' the characters are schematic, simple athletic bodies designed to overcome traps as if they were the Olympics , and the reference to Natali's film and video games is what makes them work.

'El Tubo' finds its great virtue in its modesty and schematics. It is a fast-paced film, very well shot and edited, that always has an extra catch, a gore explosion or an unexpected danger to keep the viewer on the edge of the seat . His conclusion may not round off the ensemble as would be desirable, but until then, it is the best proof that the 'Cube' style is not even remotely exhausted.

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The news 'The tube': a perfect demonstration of why the idea of ​​'Cube' continues to be fascinating to us was originally published in xiaomist.com by John Tones .