Cube 2

Year, director and cast

2002, directed by Andrzej Sekula, with Kari Matchett, Geraint Wyn Davies and Matthew Ferguson.

Also known as

Hypercube

Review

The first Cube was quite an original movie. It was about 6 people who were captured and put into this cube, which consisted of many little cubes, some with deadly traps. The 6 had to work together to solve how to get out of this cube. While the action played in a very small area, the tension was high and Cube became a cult hit, much deserved I must say. The original director, Vicenzo Natali, and cast are gone now and here we have the sequel, that obviously has to deal with a very big problem : the originality and freshness of the first movie is gone and you just can't copy the first movie, because that would be quite a boring enterprise. So they decided to add another dimension to the cube and make it a hypercube.

Again, 8 people are entrapped in the cube, with no apparent reason. These people are a blind girl, a private eye, an old and demented woman, a young computre wiz and 4 others. They don't know how they got there and decide to explore the other segments of this cube. After a while, they discover that they are inside a hypercube, which adds a 4th dimension. This means that they can encounter themselves, but in a parallel universe. The cube also has some dirty traps and when the story progresses, they learn that almost everyone has something to do with the company Izon, who build the cube.

Although this is a sequel, the movie has a different approach. While the action still plays inside a giant cube and we have 8 people put there with no known reason, the tension is build up in a different way than in the original. First of all, while the first cube had some logic, this hypercube seems so advanced that everything happens at random. While in the first movie the cooperation between the characters seemed to be necessary to escape from the cube, no such thing here. Here, we only have the tension between the different characters to build the movie on. The first cube also seemed quite realistic, while this hypercube has a lot of SF mumbo jumbo surrounding it. It's an interesting premise of different dimensions crossing each other (and so the characters meet themselves a couple of times), but this can never happen in real life (I hope not, one Tim is enough to handl :). And last, but not least, the first cube was quite dark and looked like it was build out of metal, which gave it a much more depressing look. This hypercube is quite stylish, totally white, and isn't as menacing as the first model.

Luckily, the story and characters are quite interesting, but sadly enough, the quality of the dialogue and actors is much lower than in the first cube. The dialogue mostly exists of "I really can't believe I just saw that!!", "Izon?? Did you say Izon?",... And so on. I found this quite annoying. Luckily, the script is quite strong, so this doesn't ruin the movie. But I hope that, if a next cube is ever build, the sorry bastards they put in there have paid much more attention in acting school. The gore has also slightened, but there are some nice killings. The best thing are the special effects and morphs. These are made with a computer and because this cube is a technical thing, these effects fit in perfectly (although the gore effects are a little bit too clean).

After pulling the video out of my VCR, I was really surprised that I had just seen an interesting movie. Yes, it has many bad things about it (and the acting department is sorely neglected), but the interesting story pulls it through. While this movie comes nowhere near the first Cube, it's still recommended viewing for fans of SF-horror. Now, let's all hope that this series will not have the same batch of sequels like Friday The 13th or Nightmare On Elm Street. Because the cube is out of dimensions!

Conclusion

STORY : 

GORE :

ATMOSPHERE : 

HUMOR :

ACTING : 

TOTAL : ½

LESS INVENTIVE BUT STYLISH SEQUEL TO THE ORIGINAL CUBE.