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 o say that the filmmakers of "Cube 2: Hypercube"
knew what they were doing, or where they were going, would be giving them too
much credit. Similar to its original, "Cube 2" is an Idea Movie: that
is, it's the movie's premise that is of utmost importance, with story and plot
secondary -- if that.
Like its 1997 predecessor, "Cube 2" opens with
strangers waking up individually inside a cube-shape room. One-by-one, the
strangers encounter each other, introduce themselves, and seek a way out of this
strange prison. At first no one seems to know why he or she has been taken,
abducted from his or her normal everyday lives. (Or at least they claim not to
know.) Gradually, as they make their way through the cubes, it is revealed that
each and every one of them has a reason to be here, and that they know more than
they are saying.
The whole idea behind the original "Cube"
was not to craft any coherent story about human nature or anything similarly
noble. It was, in my opinion, an attempt by the filmmakers to see how much
creativity they can muster and how much they can get away with by making a movie
on a modest budget. The original's set, essentially a single cube that was
re-dressed differently with colored gels to mark a different cube, gets an
upgrade here. The set of "Cube 2" is definitely more expensive, and
the properties of the different cubes are trickier.
Of the strangers, there's Geraint Wyn Davies as Simon, a
knife-wielding tough guy with tendencies toward violence, and Kari Matchett as
the strong-willed Kate, who is essentially the film's lead. As before, the
different characters, because of their different backgrounds and personalities,
clash over decisions. And unfortunately just like the original, the characters
realize that working together is the only way to survive, only to have the whole
thing de-evolve into a Teen Slasher movie. (This, incidentally, is the one big
problem I had with the original. It doesn't look as if the filmmakers have
learned their lesson, natch.)
The original's story, as muddled as it was to begin with
(Who built the cube? For what purpose?), led one to believe that something
catastrophic had occurred in the world outside the cube prison. We are never
told about the state of the world, and as such the idea of escaping the cube
seems not only mysterious, but also foreboding. What is waiting for our
survivors out there? In the sequel, there isn't any of that looming doom. This
is done away with by showing the characters moments before their abduction. The
world, as it turns out, hasn't changed a bit. The result is that there's no
atmosphere of dread awaiting the survivors.
With a big budget, comes cheesy CGI. There are no longer
any inspirational kill scenes or groovy ambushes awaiting our prisoners. Instead,
we get a spinning CGI cube that mangles its victims and -- get this -- some sort
of slow-moving crystal blocks that knock people's heads off. (What?) Where are the laser
trip wires that slice people into little chunks?
The screenplay is so in love
with the film's notion of a hypercube -- cubes that defies gravity and warps
time -- that all we get are characters with surface personalities. As a result I could have cared less if any of them survived; they were all
very irritating, especially the old lady with Alzheimer's and the blind girl
whose only line of dialogue, it seems, was to repeat, "What just
happened?" over and over again. Even our lead, Kate, gets rather annoying
after a while.
Not surprisingly, "Cube 2" paves the way for
another sequel with an unbelievably stupid ending that involves a twist that
seems to exist for the sake of having a twist. Seeing as how the original's
creativity has taken a back seat to glossy sets and CGI, I have little faith
that the third in the franchise will be much better. If anything, it might get
dumber. Whereas the original offered you (the viewer) the opportunity to try to
figure out the puzzle along with its characters, there isn't any of that here.
The characters in "Cube 2" talks on and on about the theory of
hypercube and such, but no one ever solves any puzzles. As a result, you're just
sitting there listening to them talk about hypercubes and whatnot, but you're
not involved.
The producers must surely realized by now that simply
repeating the formula of the first was a bad idea. How many sequels can you make
where people wake up in a cube (which will no doubt get even more super-duper
with each sequel), bicker, work together, bicker some more, then turn on each
other -- all capped off with an ambiguous ending that answers nothing because it
makes absolutely no sense to anyone, even the filmmakers who probably thought it
up at the last minute.
An Idea Movie is fine, people. But maybe it's time to add a
real story and a real purpose to back up that idea, eh?
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