"The question is did he solve it, before he died?"
The idea is to connect up a five dimensional space time
with doors in the six sides of each cube.
Putting people in as rats in the maze is a sort of
inhumanity twist ( specially the old lady with Alzheimer's disease and the blind girl). An older version "pre" the first sequel exists from the 60's
I think. So the movie is a remake of an old sci fi film
jazzed but to make it harder...
The reality collapse of the in-folding of the cubes toward the end of
the cycle leads to ....

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.

I now have Cube 1, 2, and 3. The 1st and 3rd are the best, the 2nd is okay but not as intense or real looking as the others - to much computer work. All and all though a good night time Sci-Fi to enjoy.

Thomas

The movie aims to be a scifi horror flick and I think fails in scoring in either of the genres. The first one was good because it aimed at being a horror flick primarily and was more phsycological. In the first movie ~(cube), the fact that the characters were trapped in a grand maze of cubes and the way the cubes moved and what logic it used was very intelligent. The logic was rooted in mathematics and was understandably explained to the movie goer. In cube 2 there is little explanation of the mechanism of the cubes. The explanation cannot be given because it will prove to be too much for the average movie goer as it would be better understood by physicists with PHD degrees. The internal suspicions between the characters in the cube 1 movie and the transition of supposed good characters to darker and down right evil ones was done well. Over here in cube 2.0, the group dynamism is not built that well. The concept of the cube is still there in this movie but this time it is more convuluted. It seems the cube is a quantum physics experiment and the cubes are hyper cubes wuth an extra spatial dimention. The cubes also move along time and each cube could be a portal to a parallel universe. Because of this sci-fi core to the film, the film ceases to to be a successor to a cult horror flick franchise that cube 1 promised and tries to be a high concept sci-fi film. And there is no gore, which is ok if the suspense was good and something was there to compensate for the lack of it. Everything is just graphics and green screen. No real horror or scary moments. Also there are no clues to the workings of the cube only a bunch of razel dazzle eye candy and a number which keeps repeating through out the sides of the differnt cube rooms which is later explained to be of a certain significance but was not a surprise. It could have been so much better. Bad execution of extending a good franchise set in motion by cube 1.0 and bad extension of the cube universe. Yet to see cube 0, the prequel to both of these. The bonus features section is ok with a lof of material mostly only on the CGI effects and a detailed exposition of the title sequence.

regards, Vikram

This one is 'cleaner' than the previous... and kinda 'mind-warping'. Some really bizzar-reality parts... in a good way. But trying to wrap your mind around how the cubes, and everyone and everything in them, work... well, good luck. : ) Oh yeah... surprise ending, too.