The Long Road

04/16/2003 Archived Entry: "Cube 2: Hypercube"

The two Cube movies are like reality TV on heroin. Both movies are about following a group of strangers around as they try to figure their way out of an endless maze of identical rooms. Throw in some high tech death traps and you get some very high strung people and engaging characterization.

The Cube was a nice little independent Canadian sci-fi film that attracted a rather large cult following. There were really only two ways they could have made a sequel. One would have been to do it exactly like the first but have a different group of people and different traps, which would essentially be a remake of the first. The other way would be to expand on the first and show us more behind the scenes material and to make it bigger and bolder, but this route diminishes the charm of the first.

Cube 2 decides to go with the second route. The first one was a human drama about the extremes that people can reach when placed in an incredible situation. The sequel retains some of that but veers more towards X-Files territory with military/government conspiracies and theoretical physics. This time out the cube serves more as a death trap for enemies of the builders as everyone trapped in it is on some kind of hit list. Because this was more of a conspiracy story, the ending lost a lot of the poetic irony found in its predecessor.

All the actors were pretty much unknowns but they all did a pretty good job. Two of the characters spoke with lisps though, I found that a little distracting. Another distracting thing was that the main character looked disturbingly like a girl my housemates and I know. We ended up rooting for her to survive the ordeal.

Bottom line: if you want to see a really good human drama go watch the Cube, then if you want more see the sequel.

Overall: 8/10

Replies: 3 comments

I agree. The first one was much better. I liked that it was darker and focused more on the people in the cube than on the who did it and why. But it was interesting to sorta find out who was behind it. 60659 ;)

Posted by Andrea @ 04/16/2003 08:22 PM EST

I dunno, I seem to remember governemnt/military talk in the first one, too. That's who they figured it had to be behind it all.

Posted by Romer @ 04/17/2003 03:34 AM EST

I don't remember if there was conspiracy talk in the first (though I'm sure there was), but there definately is more of it in the sequel. In fact, the movie is wrapped around the whole conspiracy thing.

Posted by Rayne @ 04/18/2003 04:02 AM EST