HoopTober Part VII Entry #29

Cube 2: Hypercube tries its hardest to be bigger and better than the original Cube, and on paper, it might seem that way.
Whereas the original movie had a shoestring budget and used only one set for every room, this movie has significantly higher production values and a meatier budget. Instead of dark and grimy rooms dimly-lit with neon colors, the rooms are now brightly-lit, white, and sterile. And instead of the rudimentary death traps of the first film, there are now reality-bending and abstract traps that are entirely CGI.
Unfortunately, Cube 2: Hypercube is proof positive that sometimes, less is more. In its efforts to top the original movie, Cube 2 loses sight of everything that made the original good to begin with and is worse in every way. The original movie's industrial aesthetic and scrappy low-budget charm has gone and replaced with a bland and soulless aesthetic that feels like a shitty Syfy Channel movie. The thrilling and tightly-paced story is now a nonsensical mess of faux-deepness and wastes all potential that the premise could have had. In contrast to the rudimentary yet effective death traps in the first movie, the traps here are more advanced but completely fall flat because of how awful the CGI is. The first movie didn't have great CGI either, but used it sparsely. Here, subpar CGI is constantly used, and the bigger budget leaves no justification this time.

Cube 2: Hypercube is flat out awful. Neither the director nor the writer of the first film were involved in this one or the prequel Cube Zero (which I've heard is just as bad as this one), and it shows. While the makers of Cube 2 clearly put some effort into it, the film ultimately fails on every level.