CUBE 2: HYPERCUBE

A group of people wake up inside a structure made up of cuboid-shaped rooms, with no memory of who or what brought them inside. While searching for a way out, they begin to question the mysterious mechanisms that control the prison they are in, approaching an impossible yet unsettling truth: they are prisoners of a hypercube, a structure only theoretically considered by Quantum Physics, where the three dimensions of which we know solids are composed, a fourth is added, capable of opening the doors to a series of realities parallel to ours. Only by traveling through the rooms and the multiple realities, the group of prisoners will get closer to the exit and to the understanding of the mysterious recurring number, 60659, which seems to be the only key to escape the deadly trap they have been imprisoned in. At least on paper, this "Hypercube - Cube 2" seemed to be equipped with a series of convincing premises, capable of warding off the fear of being faced with one of the many soulless sequels, so dear to modern cinema. A richer production than its predecessor, a director with a more modern taste and a series of important experiences behind him (Andrzej Sekuła has been the director of photography in several films, including "Pulp Fiction" and "American Psycho," as well as the director of numerous music videos), state-of-the-art special effects, an engaging and deliciously incomprehensible plot: everything seems to promise more than a simple return to the claustrophobic atmospheres of Vincenzo Natali's film, "Cube - The Cube." But promises are not always kept. Even at a superficial level of analysis, the film highlights all its weaknesses right from the start: Andrzej Sekuła crafts a direction without infamy and without praise, occasionally seasoned with a series of digital effects that, at least from the images of the first trailers, seemed to be of significantly higher quality. The cast does its best to make the film enjoyable, not succeeding at all: despite the effort, the film rarely excites or scares. The most evident shortcomings, however, emerge at a deeper level: the screenplay (curated, among others, by Sean Hood himself, who had worked on the drafting of "Halloween: Resurrection," this time also as the creator of the story) leaves a bitter taste in many respects. Already from the introductory sequence preceding the opening credits, it is clear that one is facing a poor copy of Vincenzo Natali's film. The film begins with a panoramic view of the future characters of the story, immediately presenting the world outside the Cube, and with it a fantastic but predictable military-fantasy organization called IZON, distorting two of the elements that most contributed to creating the myth around the first film: the not knowing who was behind the creation of the Cube and the doubting the very existence of a world outside the rooms. The theory of the hypercube itself, as fascinating as it may be, proves too abstract to be understood, either due to the complete lack of knowledge of Quantum Physics in the average viewer or the few seconds dedicated to its explanation. The "strategy" of parallel realities, which seems to open infinite paths to the plot developments, inadvertently buries any involvement of the viewer: if in the first film, however complex, the solution seemed within reach and achievable with a difficult but logical reasoning (pushing us to calculate the escape routes together with the film's characters), here everything becomes hypothetical, unreal, and therefore distant from any attempt at reasoning. Too much freedom to imagine leads to the disappearance of tension; the world of the "difficult but possible" gives way to the world of the "impossible and completely absurd," forcibly distancing the viewer: if everything is possible, the only people who can know how to solve the puzzle are the screenwriter and the director. We are left only to watch and get bored. The traps that we were promised, then, have no flavor: instead of the very evil mechanical diabolical devices (do you remember the tension in the scene of the room with the noise sensors in "Cube - The Cube"? And the initial scene? Breath-taking stuff...), there are futuristic but at the same time incomprehensible tortures. A wall that approaches and kills (?), a series of transparent slabs that decapitate (but what is it, ice?) and a quite improbable razor sphere that pulps a character swallowing it into nothingness. Hmm... The most serious and unforgivable lack, however, is the total absence of psychological depth in the characters, completely flat and stereotyped: without this deepening, even the subtle and dark message that enriched a film already perfect in itself like Vincenzo Natali's has been lost. If the prisoners could not coexist in a confined space without massacring each other, what would have become of humanity as a whole? Was it really worth it for the characters in the story to be saved? The answer became crystal clear at the end of the film: only the "retarded one," the one who lived in his reality of purity and innocence, far from the egoism and bullying of the human race, deserved to gain the exit from the Cube, becoming a sort of last man on Earth, a survivor on whom to rebuild a better world. And instead, what do we get from the ending of "Hypercube - Cube 2"? The certainty that the bad guys of IZON have completed phase 2 and are about to start a new one. In this regard, only one prospect scares us: that "Cube 3" tells nothing more than the story of a poor group of spectators locked in a cinema hall, forced to endure the deadly torture of the projection of a new, useless sequel. A tip: if you haven't seen "Cube - The Cube," rent it on tape and ignore "Hypercube - Cube 2": you will save the money for the cinema. If you have already seen it, rent it again. In any case, it will be money better spent.