The Cube franchise was inevitably stretched a little too thin in 2004 when Ernie Barbarash, the producer of first sequel Cube2: Hypercube (2002), stepped up to the director’s chair to make this entirely superfluous prequel. One of the great strengths of Vincenzo Natali’s original Cube (1997) – as with Cube2, Natali had nothing to do with this one – is that it doesn’t give anything away about the eponymous cube, a huge “prison” made up of tens of thousands of smaller cubes, full of booby traps but largely devoid of answers. It remained an enigma to the very end and even though Cube2 tried to explain some of the back story in a new version of the structure, it’s purpose remains just ambiguous enough to make it interesting. In Cube Zero – set for no good reason before the first film – we come perilously close to finding out what the cube is for and suddenly it seems more mundane than it ever should have.

More subjects have been incarcerated in the cube and this time we learn that their progress through the structure is being monitored by two technicians, Eric Wynn (Zachary Bennett) and Dodd (David Huband). They’re ordered to record the dreams of one of the subjects, Cassandra Rains (Stephanie Moore) and Wynn is disturbed to see her dreaming about being captured by soldiers in a forest while out walking with her young daughter. Rains is in the depths of the cube with former soldier Robert Haskell (Martin Roach) who has a close connection with the cube, Jellico (Terri Hawkes), Meyerhold (Mike “Nug” Nahrgang) and Bartok (Richard McMillan). Wynn and Dodd believe that everyone in the cube is a convicted prisoner facing a death sentence and who volunteered to take part in psychological experiments as an alternative. The group is whittled down by the various traps in the cube, leaving just Rains and Haskell to keep looking for the exit. Wynn comes to believe that the “prisoners” are in the cube against their will (he can’t find Rains’ consent form) and decides to have himself incarcerated so that he can rescue Rains. But his superiors get wind of his plans and with the help of a chip implanted in Haskell’s head turn him against Wynn and Rain who nevertheless escape the cube only to find themselves being hunted by soldiers.

The title suggests that we’re going back to the very start of the cube but in fact that’s not the case. It already exists at the start of film and has been in use for some time. We learn a little more about its purpose and location (it’s underground) but it’s to the detriment of the story. During the first film, Worth had described the cube as “a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan,” suggesting that it was essentially a pointless folly whose original purpose has already been forgotten. Here we see the vague outlines of that purpose, a containment device, seemingly run by the military, the prisoners progress through the maze of cubes monitored by faceless bureaucrats who are as clueless as to what’s really going on as the people they’re watching over. Although we’re no closer to finding out what’s really going on, even the merest hint of watchful technicians and pursuing soldiers somehow dilutes the mystery.

Taking us outside the cube is the biggest blunder. Did we really need to see the very ordinary and not at all imposing people running the cube on a day-to-day basis? Wasn’t it more interesting when our paranoid imaginations were allowed to run riot and imagine all manner of shadowy – and possibly even inhuman – agents controlling the fates of the inmates? Surely the notion that the people running it were simply putting people in the maze simply as a way to justify the fact that it exists at all, as suggested in the first film, is more intriguing than seeing the behind-the-scenes mundanity?

The fact that two main technicians aren’t terribly interesting and spend a good deal of the first half of the film sniping at each other doesn’t help much. When we do get back into the cube itself – looking very drab and not dissimilar to the basement of any industrial building – there’s little here that we haven’t seen before. Indeed, this is the only Cube film in which the cube itself seems dull and uninteresting – surely not what Barbarash could have been hoping for.

The gore is back from the first film but Barbarash splashes the red stuff around in lieu of a decent script, a plot that will hook you with its many mysteries or any hint of atmosphere. And that’s the real problem with Cube Zero. Barbarash, who also wrote the script, may take us behind the curtain to see what’s going on backstage, but elsewhere he simply recycles bits and pieces that we’ve become familiar with from the first two films. The intriguing time travel/parallel universe themes of the second film are gone, as is the brighter interior of the cube and we’re back to the darker, more industrial look of the original structure (which makes sense of course but it just doesn’t look as good as in the first film); one subject is melted with acid, as in Cube and another is eviscerated by razor wire; puzzles are solved, boots thrown through doorways and arguments ensue. It all feels so second hand…

What had started out so well with Cube came to a feeble end with Cube Zero, going from intriguing and claustrophobic thriller to dreary tale of obsession. Cube had an intellect about it, Cube2: Hypercube some fascinatingly big ideas – Cube Zero just has some terrible performances, a soldier reprogramed as assassin, a procedure that gives him green glowing eyes for some reason, and walls that visibly shake when people are thrown against them. One small and very last-minute crumb of interest – the hint that the mentally challenged Kazan (Andrew Miller) may have been the subject of brain surgery performed by the owner/operators of the cube – is intriguing but does nothing to save the film.