Unlucky...? No, LUCKY, DAMN IT! My Hooptober 2020 Watchlist

God, even the name of this movie is trash. Cube 2: Hypercube. Ugh. That should be the new “terrible sequel name” joke. Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo innocent!

So, I know the “popular reviews” section is starting to look like a steady stream of Hooptober 7 participants wailing on this 18-year-old movie like we’re all the passengers in the “Get a hold of yourself!” scene from Airplane! And yet … I would find it nigh impossible to be charitable in any way to this movie. I knew just from the direction of the early scenes I would hate this, and when I found out director Andrzej Sekula was also the D.P. my heart dropped into my stomach.

This movie wasn’t just bad, it was annoying bad. The multi-colored industrial hell of the original Cube set is replaced with a generic blown-out fluorescent white cube that is actively unpleasant to look at on digital film. The characters from the original movie weren’t deep, but the characters in this film are not only broader but spend most of the runtime screaming at each other. The traps are worse. The gore is worse. The CGI is laughably bad. The corpse props look like they were purchased at a Spirit Halloween. At one point I got into that Star Wars Holiday Special state where watching Tubi’s commercials felt like a relief. And then the ending came and it was ass. It was all ass. It was exponentially increasing ass.

That being said, I watched it with RonchRonchRonch on Oct. 15, 2020 and I asked her at the end, “Would we have been better off watching the town halls” and she still said no. So I guess that puts it into perspective. Still, I really hope this is the worst film I’ll watch this Hooptober … hell, I hope it’s the worst film I watch for the rest of the year. [eyes Yoga Hosers nervously]