Cube²: Hypercube (2002)

Cube²: Hypercube: Directed by Andrzej Sekula. With Kari Matchett, Geraint Wyn Davies, Grace Lynn Kung, Matthew Ferguson. Eight strangers awaken with no memory, in a puzzling cube-shaped room where the laws of physics do not always apply.

“Hypercube. That title is terrible but I placated myself with the idea that a Hypercube is actually a real theoretical mathematical construct. That it wasnu0026#39;t some misjudged attempt at a catchy title. It is just telling it how it is. The first one was called Cube and was set in a Cube, this one is called Hypercube and is set in a Hypercube. How wrong I was. Everything – absolutely everything – in this movie is designed to be u0026quot;Bigger, Better, Fasteru0026quot;! And that is why it fails miserably.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI loved the original Cube because of itu0026#39;s simplicity. It was what one might call a pseudo Science Fiction movie. It was a psychological thriller trying on the Science Fiction coat, and it worked to perfection. You thought, this is crazy BUT it could bloody well happen. It was (apparently) set in the here and now and everything in it was eerily possible. It would have cost an awful amount of money but it was possible, it was after all just a big mechanical Cube. Even the booby-traps were deceptively simple. The real beauty for me was that you never knew or got to know the why, where, or who in the first movie. The goal was simply to get out in one piece and each person had their individual skill to help achieve that goal.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eCube2 enters the full realm of Science Fiction and immediately trips and falls flat on itu0026#39;s face. None of the simplicity is left. The `captorsu0026#39; in this new cube must deal with time shifting, gravity shifting, alternate realities, some weird killer time thingy that moves through the rooms and one of the crew who turns a bit psycho… just like the policeman character from the first movie, except (you guessed it) heu0026#39;s even a BIGGER psycho. On top of that the story tries to put a face on who is behind these experiments: The Izon Military Corp. (or something along those lines). This movie therefore is what 2010 was to 2001, albeit on a more modest level. And in the same way it just doesnu0026#39;t worku003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAlso, character development is practically nonexistent. For example one pair of characters disappear and are never seen again. Just like that, gone for no real reason except maybe to show the vastness of the Hypercube although another character seems adept at meeting the multiple instances of two other characters in particular. In the end you absolutely do not care for any of them or whether they can escape or not. The story gives you no reason to care for them. The idea of the Hypercube itself is too vast to make you care. As one character points out, the amount of possible rooms in a Hypercube is infinite. Therefore there is no real goal. The characters donu0026#39;t need each other to escape. There is no exit door in a Hypercube! So why bother at all?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnd as for the one-liners. The pain, oh the pain.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe worst bit however is reserved for the end. The Über-Military guyu0026#39;s comments on the phone make it sound like they are really contemplating a Cube3. Spare us, please!”