I Be Cubin'

I'm a horror movie fan (if you hadn't figured), more-so than I am a movie fan, which I am a huge fan of, so my love for horror movies is obviously huge. Of course, I've seen a lot of horror movies at this point, and over time, one tends to see a lot of the same stuff in the various movies watched. It takes a special movie to add something new to the genre.

Movies like Scream (only the first one), the Romero Zombie Trilogy, and the Lost Boys are successful movies that also redefine or push the boundaries of what we expect from a horror movie. Cube was another one of those movies. It's a low-budget horror flick that takes a new spin on the genre and thoroughly creeps you out... Sadly, its sequel just wasn't up to expanding on the ideals set forth in the first movie, and while decent, just isn't what it could have been.

In the original Cube, there are no monsters (at least, not in the conventional sense). The Cube, a giant set of rooms with doors linking to other rooms, is also set with traps. As people traverse the rooms, they have to deal with all manner of traps, acid, fire, cutters, you name it.

We're given a group of six people. They don't know why they are in the Cube, how they got there, or how exactly to get out. They have to try and figure out where the exit is, and they have to try and survive. Of course, as they slowly travel through the Cube, tensions rise, especially as people start to die. We get, along with the decent scares, a sociological look at the dynamic of these characters as they bicker and fight while trying to keep sane.

What Cube did right was in leaving most of the whys and hows secret. The devil you don't see is scarier than the devil you do. This is one of the big drawbacks about Hypercube.

Before I get into a direct comparison, let me just state that math plays a big part in escaping the first Cube. It was all about mapping co-ordinates on a three dimensional plane and using numbers to traverse the traps. So, when making the sequel, they decided to carry the math further. They took quantum mathematics and designed a plot around a multidimensional cube.

Hypercube is very sci-fi in feel and direction. They obviously had a better budget this time around, both from how this Cube looks as well as from some of the gadgets that come into being. The strangest thing about Hypercube, and part of what dilutes the scares of this flick, is the science fiction-y stuff they include. Since the Hypercube is multidimensional, it stands to reason that the Cube exists outside the normal flow of time. Rooms can speed up or slowdown time, people can exist in multiple instances... While cool and interesting, these concepts aren't scary.

There's also a lot less of the "how and why are we here" from the first flick. We get to establish early on that some people know what's happening, and they know who's behind it. This deflates the whole creep factor. Know when know who the devil is, and it makes us care less.

The deaths are also kinda weak in Hypercube, which again makes the movie less than it should have been. It's again that whole sci-fi thing, which has cool technological traps done in CG. The CG ruins it though. We can tell it's all fake, and relying on the CG pulls us outside the movie. It lessens the impact of the scares.

Of course, Cube did so many things right, I can't say that taking the concept in a new direction was a bad thing. Better not to just remake the first movie, I say, but in the process, kind of realize what made the first one so great. All we got for a sequel was a watered down horror-sci blend that just kinda limps along to an anti-climactic conclusion. Bleh.