As its title playfully suggests, this direct-to-video sequel to 1997’s Cube – made without the involvement of original director Vincenzo Natali – expands on the basic idea of the first film in several intriguing ways. Of course, it lacks the originality of the first film and skimps on the gore but makes up for it by introducing a few new ideas, some more welcome than others.

The new film is set inside a new cube, a second iteration of the structure (“the original” is referred to obliquely a number of times), a less colourful prison than before. This time the production design by Diana Magnus is simpler, more stripped back but no less effective, a network of glowing chambers with the image of a tesseract etched on each doo. Into this nightmare comes Becky (Greer Kent), an employee of the defence contractor Izon who wakes in one of the cubes before being dragged away by person or forces unknown. Elsewhere in the new cube, seven more captives – psychotherapist Kate (Kari Matchett), private detective Simon (Geraint Wyn Davies), who is looking for Becky, engineer Jerry (Neil Crone), computer hacker and games designer Max (Matthew Ferguson), lawyer Julia (Lindsey Connell), blind teenager Sasha (Grace Lynn Kung) and Alzheimer’s-stricken former theoretical mathematician Mrs Paley (Barbara Gordon), all in some way connected to Izon – also find themselves trapped in the structure.

The big difference between the two iterations of the cube Is that new one is that the new structure is a hypercube, one that exists in 4 dimensions. Traps are few and far between this time, but rooms exist in parallel universe, with different gravitational fields and in different times. Time and space continue to disobey the usual rules and Kate learns from Sasha – in reality Alex Truss, the creator of the tesseract – that the structure is collapsing and about to implode. The meaning of a number that keeps popping up in the cube, “60659” suddenly becomes clear but there’s not going to be a happy ending for any of the prisoners as the real operators of the cub prepare for the “termination” of “Phase 2.”

Cube2: Hypercube was directed by Andrzej Sekula, better known as a cinematographer with close links to Quentin Tarantino (he shot Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Four Rooms (1995)) as well as films like Hackers (1995), American Psycho (2000) and Vacancy (2007). Sean Hood (Halloween: Resurrection (2002), The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005), Conan the Barbarian (2011), Hercules: The Legend Begins (2014)) was behind the screenplay which factors in the whole hypercube business but doesn’t quite match the strengths of the first film. The puzzle-solving element that had made Cube so intriguing, for example, is almost entirely missing this time.

A common complaint levelled at the first film was about its two-dimensional characters (oh, the irony…) but the sequel fares no better – in fact if anything, this group of prisoners is rather less charismatic than the first. You won’t care much about most of them – in fact you may well end up positively dislike some of them – and there’s less of a sense of how much is at stake for them this time. The film also makes the mistake that Natali neatly side-stepped in the first film but spilling the beans too much on what exactly the cube is. This is made more so in an alternative ending in which it’s explicitly revealed that the cube is being run by the government – in the theatrically released ending it remains unclear who was behind the structure but the repeated references to the mysterious Izon suggests that they’re deeply involved. By the end, the has thrown up a few new mysteries yet is somehow less enigmatic.

Other flaws include some sub-standard digital effects but Cube2 gets a lot right. Norman Orenstein’s moody ambient score is fantastic, Sekula pulls of some eye-popping vertiginous, spinning camerawork in the confines of the chambers (no colour changes, the rooms remain a stark white throughout), it’s chock full of smart, head-scratching ideas and it has the distinction of containing possibly the cinema’s only 4-dimensional sex scene. Gorehounds will be left disappointed by the lack of grue – the traps are fewer and farther between this time – but for those looking for something more cerebral, if often baffling, then Cube2should fit the bill. No, Cube2isn’t as good as Cube (very few sequels are as good as their originals) but it has plenty to offer. It gives us more information about the cube than we really need – as with so many things, the more you know about it, the less interesting it becomes – but what we learn about this new version of the structure leaves just enough ambiguity to be satisfying. If you can get passed the very much of their time digital effects and the sometimes lifeless performances and focus instead on the big ideas it’s a film that works admirably on all counts.

Cube Zero followed in 2004, directed by Cube2‘s producer Ernie Barbarash and is the worthless and pointless follow-up that Cube2could so easily have been. A reboot of the franchise, Cubed, has been in development with Saman Kesh at the helm for many years.