To cap off Geometry week, we are going to move into the third dimension. Cube 2: Hypercube is currently available on instant Netflix.
PASS: Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) – Rated R for language, some violence and brief nudity.
“Eight strangers wake up trapped in a giant cube in which every door leads to more cubes just like the last. As the prisoners explore their strange habitat, they come to realize that they are inside a dimension where the laws of physics do not apply. As time goes on, they learn that if they cannot find a way out soon, they will face certain death. Presented with mysterious clues to aid in their escape, they will have to work together to find the only way out.”
“Each one of these rooms has six of these doors and portals, but no matter how many different doors and portals I go through I always end up in the same three rooms. “
Andrzej Sekula takes over directing chores from Vincenzo Natali, who directed the original Cube in 1997. Sekula gets much better performances from his actors. The biggest drawback to the original Cube was the wildly uneven acting.
The original Cube written by Andre Bijelic, Vincenzo Natali and Graeme Manson used a cheesy science fiction premise to explore social archetypes. It was a fascinating idea that played out as a horror movie but had a lot of neat points to make.
Cube 2, written by Sean Hood, Ernie Barbarash and Lauren McLaughlin takes the cheesy science fiction premise and umm tells a science fiction story.
Science fiction works best when it is used to tell us something, usually of the human condition. Dune (the book) is a masterpiece of social conditioning, political power, religion and ecology. Planet of the Apes (the original movie) is a wonderful civil rights allegory told as an adventure story.
On the face of it Cube 2 appears to simply be a retelling of Cube. Unfortunately it changes a lot of what made Cube work.
Cube 2 drops the traps in favor of a lot of mumbo-jumbo about parallel dimensions and time travel. Instead of having the facade of a character fall away as in Cube, Cube 2 just has a psycho from the beginning who starts killing people.
Sekula is also a bit too enamored of splitscreen. Brian De Palma was an early master of it but after eight seasons of 24, splitscreen just does not seem appealing any more.
I enjoyed Cube 2 and found it to be a passable waste of an hour and a half but there really is not enough here for me to recommend it. I rate it a pass – go rent the first Cube instead and try to look past the acting.
For those of you with set top boxes, Cube 2 is presented in high-definition.
People Watch: Not one – not two – not three but four of the actors in this were also in American Psycho II: All American Girl. Geraint Wyn Davies (Simon), Andrew Scorer (Dr. Phil), Neil Crone (Jerry), and Greer Kent (Becky) all appear in both movies.
