Saturday, February 28, 2009

Cube 2 - Hypercube

Cube 2: Hypercube is actually a sequel to the highly successful if little known sci-fi exercise in hopeless existentialism, Cube. The premise is that a bunch of complete strangers wake up in a series of interconnected cubes. There are ladders and doors in all six panels of the room. Traps await the unwary, but the real danger is, as Sartre famously quoted in No Exit, "other people."

What made Cube more than two hours of torture was the mathematical puzzle that powered the environment. Because the cube was a three-dimensional environment, it came with certain rules that could be puzzled out. Hypercube adds a fourth dimension, time, and that changes the rules significantly.

The poor saps stuck in the cube this go round include: Rebecca Young (Greer Kent) who went missing into the Cube, Simon Grady (Geraint Wyn Davies) the private investigator hired to find her, Sasha the blind girl with a mysterious past (Grace Lynn Kung), Max Reisler (Matthew Ferguson) the gaming geek, Jerry Whitehall (Neil Crone) the architectural designer, Juila Sewell (Lindsey Connell) the hot attorney, the irritating Alzheimer's afflicted Mrs. Paley (Barbara Gordon), and finally Kate Filmore (Kari Matchett) a psychologist with a dark past and our protagonist.

Like the first movie, Hypercube dumps our mysterious characters right into the grand guignol. Unlike Cube, Hypercube explains how they got there. All of the characters have a past to an organization known as Izon. This nefarious organization doesn't take kindly to failure, and all our characters are flawed in some way. Without hope, our characters revert to their basest natures. For Max and Julia, it's lust. For Simon, it's violence. For Sasha and Kate, it's deception.

Unfortunately, there are long stretches of talking wherein Jerry explains how hypercubes (also known as a tesseract) work. Because it exists in more than three dimensions, just about anything is possible, including parallel realities. Which means there's no reasonable chance for our protagonists to escape, except for the distinct possibility that in another reality, they already DID escape. Once the parallel world concept is introduced, Hypercube really comes into its own. Remember, there's no food in the cube...

The special effects are minimal and the traps are less inventive than the first. Hypercube is more concerned about the possibilities of alternate dimensions than it is about killing people off, relying instead on the inevitable backstabbing. Although there is a tantalizing series of clues as to the true nature of the hypercube, it's a bit of a feint - figuring it out doesn't help the characters escape or give them much of an advantage. This is a refreshing twist for jaded moviegoers and a depressing downer for those who are looking for a satisfying conclusion.

To the director's credit, Hypercube is relentless in its cynicism. If Cube was existentialist, its sequel is nihilistic.

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