Review of 'Cube 2: Hypercube'

A new cube and a new dimension – Eight strangers awake to find themselves in a mysterious cube room with doors on each face leading to…you guessed it…other cube rooms. Mrs Paley (Barbara Gordon), an older lady who seems to have lost her memory…and her mind though perhaps has one or two secrets to tell. Sasha (Grace Lynn Kung), a blind girl seemingly helpless to the traps of the maze…though perhaps has one or two secrets to tell. Colonel Thomas H. Maguire (Bruce Gray) who we briefly meet at the beginning of the story who was involved in making the original cube structure but is wholly unprepared for this new version. Psychoanalyst Kate (Kari Matchett) who supports Sasha though perhaps has one or two secrets to tell (getting the picture yet?). Week-willed engineer Jerry (Neil Crone) who seems to keep ending up dead for some reason though perhaps has…never mind. Julia (Lindsey Connell), a lawyer dressed in a red dress recovering from a party, a young computer games developer Max (Matthew Ferguson)…and private detective Simon (Geraint Wyn Davies) who takes control of the group very quickly but has a bit of a nasty streak to his character. As they travel from cube to cube they learn about how the cube works, trying to make sense and find the way about before starving or, more likely, the cube kills them first.

Having found the first Cube film very interesting and unique I found Cube lacked either quality. There is no puzzle for the people trapped in the maze and there are far fewer and less interesting traps awaiting them. All the characters can do is simply move from room to room and hope it leads them out…that's it. There is the bad-guy that shows his ugly side about half way through the film but who this is should come as no surprise to anyone. Even the ending left me cold. I cared little for any of the characters who never really seem to be entirely human…here it is all about the supposedly amazing “third dimension” of the maze where time and gravity is different between rooms, with rooms also circling back on one another, etc. The digital effects are over done and cheesy looking. The acting is not great. The cube looks OK with neat new doors but I can't say anything else that was good. Ok, ok, there are some character surprises but the fact that everyone has a deep secret that is exposed to the others that are all freakishly (!) connected to everyone else's secret is a bit tiring and really not very surprising as the film goes on.

As you may be able to tell, I found this sequel extremely underwhelming in action, character and story. No mystery, just a bunch of plastic stereotype characters reacting to random stuff happening to them. Trying to think of something positive to say…it looks cool, some of the effects are not bad (though many are not great) and yes, some of the reveals of back story are fairly interesting. But, hum, that is it.

Rating: “Not great, but not the worse”

Review Date: 2019-05-20

Directed by: Andrzej Sekula

Studio: Ghost Logic

Year: 2002

Length: 94 minutes

Genre: Science Fiction

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285492/