Ernie Barbarash

The story of a tragic case of mistaken identity unfolds as the FBI detains a Moroccan woman thought to be the wife of the lead terrorist in the Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

(Note: Unlike the other films in the trilogy, Cube and Cube 2: Hypercube, the story of Cube Zero is observed from both the interior and the exterior of the cube.) The film focuses on a Cube technician, Eric Wynn, and Cassandra Rains, a woman placed in the Cube. The film starts with a man, Ryjkin, trying to escape from the Cube. He is sprayed with liquid in one of the cubes, but he believes it is only water. However, when he rubs the back of his hand he realizes that his body is disintegrating. Eric is watching this in an observation room with his co-worker Dodd. Afterwards, Eric is shown to be sketching a portrait of Dodd (in the form of a superhero called Chessman), whilst playing chess with Dodd, who has a chess board in front of him which Eric is not looking at. After Eric wins, he asks Dodd questions about their missing colleagues, but Dodd tells him not to ask too many questions or get involved with the occupants of the Cube. Both Eric and Dodd get an order from "upstairs", which asks them to record the dream of a subject, Cassandra Rains. In her dream, Eric sees that she was captured, while walking in a pleasant forest with her daughter Anna. After waking, Cassandra meets the other occupants of the Cube. One of the males placed in the cube, Robert Haskell, has a tattoo on his forehead like the soldier that captured Cassandra. However, Haskell, like everyone else, has no recollection of his former life. According to what Eric knows, everyone in the cube was facing a death sentence and were presented a choice: go in the Cube with their memory wiped or be put to death. Only if a person signs the consent form will he or she then be placed in the cube. Eric finds out that Cassandra has no consent form and argues with Dodd that they should inform the people "upstairs." Just when he is about to make a call to the superiors, the phone rings. They are instructed to perform the "exit procedure" for a subject who has reached the exit of the Cube and is facing his final challenge. They see that it is one of their former colleagues, Owen. During the exit procedure, Owen is asked if he believes in God, and when he answers no, is immediately incinerated. Eric argues with Dodd over the fate of Owen. Eric realizes the Cube is inhumane and decides to enter the cube to help Cassandra escape. Jax, one of the Cube's supervisors, and two of his analysts come to the control room to stop Eric from helping Cassandra. Despite their efforts to stop them, Eric and Cassandra make it to the exit room with the help of Dodd, who sabotages the control panels servicing the cube and pays with his life at the hands of Jax. The sabotage causes the cube to go into "reset mode", which vaporizes any living body inside the Cube after a limited period of time. Once Eric reaches an "exit room", they escape using a secret auxiliary exit. However, soldiers searching for them have already arrived. Cassandra manages to escape, but Eric is shot by a dart and passes out. Eric wakes up in a surgery room and confronts Jax, who reveals that Cassandra may have gotten away, but Eric had been found guilty of "high treason" and "sabotage" against "country and God." He has been sentenced to "two lifetimes" and will be implanted with a brain microchip. Jax claims Eric has already been convicted in a trial. Jax shows him his consent form and says he had been put in the Cube as an observer. Eric dreams about Cassandra reuniting with her daughter and praising Eric as "a superhero." Eric is then given a lobotomy, to eliminate his intelligence. In the final scene, Eric is shown inside the cube with several others victims of the government to test out the cube.

A woman named Rebecca Young / Becky (Greer Kent) wakes up in the Cube. It is indicated that Becky worked for Izon and had worked on the design and development aspects of the new Cube. She enters another room. The room enters a state of reversed gravity and it is implied that she is killed. Seven captives find themselves trapped in cubes. Psychotherapist Kate (Kari Matchett), detective Simon Grady (Geraint Wyn Davies), a blind teenager and a professional computer hacker named Alexandra "Sasha" Trusk (Grace Lynn Kung), an engineer who worked on the hyper-cube's touch panels for the doors Jerry (Neil Crone), a computer hacker and game developer Max (Matthew Ferguson), an LA defense lawyer representing Izon Julia (Lindsey Connell), and an elderly woman, who is a retired theoretical mathematician who worked for Izon named Mrs. Paley (Barbara Gordon) are trapped in brightly lit cubes, each with six panels on each side which are doors to other rooms. None of the captives have any memory of how they got into the Cube. This time the rooms are not linearly connected to each other. Once a panel to a room closes, when it opens again, it could point to a completely different room. Jerry explains that the panels in this cube are portals and no matter how many portals he goes through, he ends up in the same 3 rooms. Kate theorizes that the rooms might be moving around. Sasha says that she can hear something moving and that it is getting closer to them, and it does not sound good. Thomas Maguire also wakes up inside one of the cubes and has a briefcase in his hands. He searches for numbers on the panel edges, not finding any, indicating that he was associated with the previous iteration of the cube. The briefcase he is carrying is empty and is chained to his wrist. Maguire is despondent that he was not put inside the Cube that he designed as he wanted a chance to survive. In a new, and unfamiliar Cube, he knows that his chances or survival are minimal. They come across Colonel Maguire (Bruce Gray) (he had ID that indicated that he worked for the Department of Defense) who was trying to commit suicide by hanging himself. The group rescues Maguire, who says that they have to solve the code in order to leave the mysterious place. Maguire says that the first Cube had rules and he is unfamiliar with the rules of this current Cube. A wall begins to close in on the group. The group escape while Thomas stays behind and handcuffs himself. They realize that the wall is non-physical and evidently dangerous due to Thomas's reaction to it. Kate and Simon watch in horror as Thomas is disintegrated by the wall, the suitcase he was holding reduced to tatters. Later experiences around the cube reveal that gravity can operate in different directions in each room, while Mrs. Paley and Jerry realize that they may be in a Tesseract. Kate begins to notice the numbers "60659" everywhere they go. The group soon realizes that they are all in some way connected to Izon, a weapons manufacturer. Mrs. Paley then opens a panel to reveal her, and Simon being killed. Jerry thinks that it is a parallel universe, while Max and Julia think it is an optical illusion. Later, while the group are sleeping, Simon realizes that he is in the Tesseract to look for Becky (Greer Kent), and that he was hired by Becky's parents to find her. Meanwhile, Sasha, who has acute hearing, hears a noise and awakens everyone. The group finds a floating square in the middle of the room which initially grows into several shifting variations of a Tesseract, before expanding into a lethal and rapidly spinning frame. The group flees into another room, but Jerry is caught and dies after being pulled into the Tesseract. Kate remains to save Sasha, who is still trapped in the room. Sasha and Kate are separated from the group as a result. Simon starts to suspect that Mrs. Paley is an undercover spy, so he gags and ties her up, but crystal beams start protruding from the walls. Simon tries to save Mrs. Paley but instead stabs her with his knife and leaves her to die. Max and Julia, disturbed that Simon killed Mrs. Paley, leave him. They start to have sex, but unknown to them, they are in a room where time speeds up, and they age prematurely. Simon, alone and hungry, goes insane. He encounters a parallel Jerry and the missing Becky, killing both of them. Meanwhile, Kate finds grisly alternate realities in other rooms. Sasha tells Kate that time and space are distorted at where they are. The Tesseract will implode, and reality is collapsing. She then reveals that she is Alex Trusk, a computer hacker who is responsible for the creation of the Tesseract. She also reveals that when she discovered that Izon was actually putting people inside the Tesseract, she tried to stop their operation but was pursued so she "fled into the only place they wouldn't follow." Kate, however, still believes that there is a way out. Kate finds Simon and stabs him in the eye after he grabs her. Simon then appears behind Alex, old and blind in one eye, proving Alex's time theory. Alex claims that they "are all dead", which causes Simon to snap her neck. Kate finds that the Tesseract is shrinking and kills Simon with the knife. She looks at the numerous watch duplicates of Jerry's and realizes that "60659" is the time that the Tesseract will implode (6:06:59) and that she is there to take back Alex's necklace which was filled with confidential information on Izon. The hyper-cube starts wearing away, and Kate opens a panel in the bottom, revealing a black void. At 6:06:59, she jumps in just when the Hypercube implodes. Kate wakes up in the hands of authorities in a factory. She gives them the necklace, but she is shot in the head by one of the operatives. An authority reports that "Phase 2 is terminated" as the operatives leave the facility.