Cube II

                                                                  

 

     Okay, let's just say we are in this hypercube or whatever; does this diagram show us

            how to get out? ....Well... no. You see a hypercube isn't supposed to be real. It's

                        just a theoretical construct.

 

The film starts with a shot of several people lying on surgical gurneys wrapped in plastic. It then cuts to what appears to be a series of flashbacks of medical rooms, viewed through the eyes of a woman. The next shot shows her waking up alone in a white cube-shaped room, with a small black square on the centre of each side. She stands and calls out for help, while the camera reveals her company ID: Rebecca from IZON corporation. She approaches one of the black squares, which opens quickly when she rests her hand on it. Rebecca looks through the opening, and is yanked by an unseen force into the next room.

Cut to the image of a man in a similar white cube room, with a briefcase handcuffed to his arm. As he comes to, he opens his briefcase in a panic, and looks dejected when he finds it empty.

The next scene goes to another white room, watching a woman in a white blouse open a black door, and enters the room. She finds a seemingly unconscious man and attempts to take his pulse. He springs into action, grabbing her by the throat and brandishing a knife in her face. After making her answer a series of questions about who she is, he releases her and asks her name. She answers back with the same request. Suddenly another door opens, and a boy with curly hair looks through. They call to him, but he pulls back, and the door closes. Door after door surrounding the white room opens, with the same boy looking through. The woman pursues him through the last door he opened despite the knifed mans protests, but finds only an empty room. When she attempts to go back through the same door to the man, he is no longer there.

The woman opens another door and finds a frightened blind teenager named Sasha, wearing dark sunglasses. The woman replies with her name, Kate, while trying to comfort the girl. Another door opens and a man stumbles into their cell who proclaims to be pleased to finally find another person. He introduces himself, Jerry Whitehall, and then explains that he has wandered through several of the rooms for hours, marking each new room with a number. He scratches a number 4 into the metal of one of the doors with his metal watch wristband. They decide to open another door, and look through to find the original handcuffed man hanging by his belt that he had strapped around his neck and suspended it from one of the rungs on the wall. The curly haired boy from earlier is desperately trying to hold the man up and screams for their help. Jerry rushes to help the boy while Kate is helping Sasha climb into the room. The man with the knife suddenly enters from another door, and is quickly recruited. Through their combined efforts, they free the man who slumps unconscious to the floor.

The colonel wakes, and Simon quickly begins to lightly interrogate him about who had given the Col. the beating he apparently received. Grilling him about how to exit the rooms, the colonel mutters something about having to solve for the code to leave. They are interrupted by one of the walls suddenly vibrating, and Sasha's panicked warning that "something horrible" is coming for them. The party watches the wall in disbelief as a ghosted version of the wall begins to move towards them. They decide to act quickly and move into the next room. The colonel has other plans, and handcuffs himself to one of the nearby rungs on the wall. Kate pleads for the key to free him, but the colonel swallows it. With all of the rest of the group in the next room, Simon yells for Kate to come, but she refuses to leave. The ghosted wall approaches, and they watch the discarded briefcase slowly burn to ash as the wall engulfs it. The colonel simply states, "This is going to hurt."

Kate barely makes it into the next room, but the group continue to move along in a chain of rooms until they do not sense the vibrating wall any longer. Mrs. Paley notices a gray design in the metal of the walls, and exclaims that it is a "beautiful tesseract." Jerry confirms her sighting, and explains that a tesseract is an example of "the 4th dimension." Sparked by the evidence of his intelligence, they share their last memory before waking up in the room. Jerry tells them that he is a subcontractor that designed the technology that opens the doors. Kate is a psychotherapist, who last remembers leaving her hospital after a late night. Mrs. Paley says that the last thing she remembers is walking her dog.

In the safety of the adjacent cell, the group begins to theorize about their situation. They eventually realize that they are in a tesseract with varying times and space, right about the time that Jerry notices a number written near a door: 60659. He opens a door to another room where he sees a woman named Julia Sewell, still asleep. At this point, they discover that in some rooms, the direction of gravity can change. The number appears in many different places throughout the movie. After, the group reveals their individual histories.

In the next room, they come across a dead man with complicated mathematical equations written across his body and on all the surrounding walls. Meanwhile, Mrs. Paley is searching for her dog "Izon" - several members of the group find this odd, as Izon is the name of a large weapons manufacturer. They ask Mrs. Paley what she did for a living, and she mentions being a theoretical mathemetician at what is soon revealed to be Izon Research Affiliates. Max reveals that Alex Trusk is a mysterious hacker and may be responsible for the creation of the Cube. While searching, she opens a door in the floor where she sees herself in an alternate reality being murdered by an alternate Simon. He is then decapitated by a trap after warning the group not to trust Mrs. Paley. This scene shocks the group, but enables Jerry to explain the possibility of parallel alternate dimensions crossing over. Max and Julia hypothesize and insist that what they witnessed was instead an optical illusion. The group of seven attempts to escape the Cube, but after endless crossings and a montage concerning Alex Trusk and the nature of the Cube itself as well as their own belief in it, they are no nearer to solving its mysteries. While the others are sleeping, Simon reveals to Jerry that he is a private investigator. Simon tells him that the people who kidnapped them emptied all of his pockets with the sole exception of two items: his knife and a picture of the person he's looking for: Rebbecca "Becky" Young. He begins theorizing that perhaps it is a message or possibly a warning.

Sasha's acute hearing soon awakens her and she tells Kate that she hears "something wrong." Kate wakes the group and they spot a floating square in the middle of the room as it slowly expands to form a cube, then a tesseract. Mrs. Paley extends her hand to touch it. Jerry, sensing danger, lunges forward, telling her to keep her hand back. Unknown to them, the "floating cube" is in fact a floating tesseract of blades that is attracted to movement, and promptly slices Jerry's back. Kate, Simon, Max, Julia and Mrs. Paley manage to escape to another room as the tesseract continues to grow bigger. Jerry's writhing eventually attracts the blades and he is slashed into pieces. Kate remembers Sasha, who is still trapped at a corner of the room, and returns to save her. After a close shave with death, Sasha and Kate freeze, motionless, and the tesseract slowly decreases in size and finally disappears due to the apparent lack of movement to trigger the blades. While the pair is now safe, they are separated from the group.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Paley is bound and gagged by Simon, who is convinced that she is putting on an act as a senile old woman, and is in fact behind the creation of the Cube (since she was a past employee of Izon). Their intense confrontation is cut short by crystalline columns protuding from the walls, similar to the "moving wall" of the room where Thomas died. Simon tries to save Mrs. Paley but he forced to flee, leaving her to die as he makes his escape, following Max and Julia. Appalled by Simon's murder, Max and Julia quickly flee to other rooms to distance themselves from Simon. Max and Julia soon stop running, and it is then revealed that both are linked to Izon as well. In a moment of heated passion, Julia kisses Max. Unbeknownst to them, they are in a room with faster time, and they age prematurely and soon die.

In the interim, Simon succumbs to stress and goes insane. He meets Jerry from an alternate reality, and proceeds to kill him through shock and near-starvation - shortly followed by a similar encounter with Rebecca. It is then implied that Simon cannibalizes multiple alternate realities of Jerry and Rebecca to stay alive.

Kate begins to encounter rooms containing grisly scenes from the past, shaking her confidence and causing her mental fatigue. Meanwhile, endless escape attempts have taken their toll on Sasha, who gives up hope. She also reveals that she is in fact Alex Trusk, who was mostly responsible for the creation of the hypercube and knows that there is only a matter of time before their reality collapses in on itself and the entire cube implodes. Kate, however, refuses to die, and frantically searches for a way out, but each door she opens reveals a disturbing scene from the past (the deaths of Thomas, Jerry, Mrs. Paley, Max and Julia) before finally meeting Simon himself. Kate quickly grabs Simon's knife and stabs him in the eye.

She turns around only to realize that Simon, now aged and blind in the left eye, is holding Sasha hostage. He kills Sasha and moves towards Kate, who escapes through a door that leads to the opposite end of the same room. Simon is taken aback, and Kate pounces on him. She manages to use his own knife to kill him. Kate notes the time on Simon's watch, and based on the recurring number "60659" found throughout the Cube, and Sasha's theory of the Cube's impending implosion, she finally deduces that the Cube will implode at 6:06:59. Just as everything around her falls apart, Kate grabs Sasha's necklace and opens the door in the floor, revealing a black void. She jumps in as the Cube implodes. She awakens in a glimmering pool and is escorted to Izon authorities. It is implied that Kate's job was to locate Alex and retrieve the information she stole from Izon. Handing over Sasha/Alex's necklace which contains the stolen information, Kate is then executed with a single shot to the head. The film ends with the Izon authorities reporting that "Phase 2 is terminated".

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Directed by Andrzej Sekula
Produced by Ernie Barbarash
Peter Block
Suzanne Colvin
Written by Sean Hood
Starring Kari Matchett
Geraint Wyn Davies
Grace Lynn Kung
Music by Norman Orenstein
Distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment
Release date(s) 2002
Running time 95 minutes
Language English
Budget

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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