Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)

We open with shots of the various Cube dwellers wrapped in plastic on beds. We see a terrified eye cut with scenes of a lab worker working on something which looks complicated and technical.

We then see a middle-aged man dressed smartly but clearly battered and bruised. He talks to himself about how they haven't given him his numbers and how he has no chance. He has an empty briefcase.

All the main characters meet as they travel through the rooms. They are Kate Filmoore, an attractive 30-something with good people skills, Simon Grady, a middle-aged man with a slightly aggressive/cynical temperament, Jerry Whitehall, a portly, friendly middle-aged man, Max Reisler, a nerdy young guy, Sasha, a young blind girl, Julia, an attractive 30 something in a red dress, and Mrs Paley, a seemingly senile older woman. They talk about why they are there and witness an alternative reality in which Simon kills the Mrs Paley and then has his head knocked off by a block. This shocks them all, especially Simon, and they discuss how it could have happened.

They then come across a man lying on the ground. It turns out he is a scientist working in the field of Quantum Chaos and the old woman knows him. He has lots of mathmatic workings out on his body, but he seems close to death. He dies and they take his pen and note down his conclusions.

They keep going and come across the Colonel from earlier hanging himself by his belt on a ladder. He asks for help and they get him down, but he is unconcious. He is a pentagon operative according to the Max. Simon is unforgiving and angry about the situation they are in, and tries to beat some truth out of him. The wall then starts closing in, and the Pentagon operative doesn't try to escape. He cuffs himself to the ladder then swallows the key. Kate tries to free him but cannot, so they leave him there. He grabs at her leg as she is leaving.

Heres what we learn from the dialogue throughout these scenes, since it is rather integral to the plot.
*We learn about a weapons company called Izon, and that most of (if not all) the people in the Cube have some connection to it. It is unclear whether they created the Hypercube or are rivals to the creators or what. Alot of people assume the former but it is never stated.
*We learn Jerry designed the door panels
*Mrs Paley was a physicist for Izon who it seems had some part in the theory of the Cube. She also seems to have flashbacks regarding the makers forcing her to make it so people could be put into the cube(she is quite senile/mentally not there)
*The detective(simon) is in there to rescue an Izon worker called Rebecca (or so he thinks - because the only items he still has are a photo of her and his knife)
*Kate is a psycho-therapist, or so she says - the lack of a link for Kate and Sasha is significant at this point, since it should make us wonder who they ACTUALLY are.

*We keep hearing talk of a hacker called Alex Trusk. Information on Alex:
"He" supposedly crashed Wall Street and crashed military jets as a war protest. He has few morals (Max)
""He" is a conspiracy theorists wet dream" (Jerry)
Certain parties start to believe Truss is responsible for the Hypercube.

As they progress they come across a strange square unfolding into a cube and so on in the middle of the room. It slowly becomes more aggressive and erratic. Mrs Paley is fascinated and tries to touch it, but Jerry jumps in the way and gets sliced a bit. They then all try to leave the room but Jerry gets a second dicing and doesn't make it through this one. Kate and Sasha stay behind and avoid the shape until it returns to normal. Max, Julia and Simon all leave. Simon then takes the Mrs Paley captive and ties her to the hatch as he believes she knows something, given her recognition of the mincer in the previous room, he is about to kill her for not coming forth with the info he wants, but suddenly the clear shapes start coming across the room, Julia tells him to free her, which he attempts to do. However it is too late and the clear shapes have caught the old womans foot. She tries to grab onto Simon so he won't leave her, but he stabs her twice in the stomach and leaves her to die.

Julia and Max escape, and when Simon reaches the next room they are gone. He keeps going and then comes upon Jerry again. He's confused but realises this must be a Jerry from a different parallel. Simon tells him his theory was right and Jerry doesn't understand, as he has just woken up in the Cube in that dimension. Simon then tells him he is "pretty fucking starving". I think we are to assume he eats Jerry. After he does this he takes Jerrys watch.. he then hears another voice.. its Jerry again. We hear Simon enter the other room and murder him once more. Finally he hears another voice. It's Rebecca Young, the Izon worker he was sent in to retrieve by her parents. He tells her as much and she is relieved, but he stabs her suddenly. He is not a well man.

Meanwhile Julia and Max are going through various rooms in which time speeds up and slows down. Max reveals he invented the concept of varying time speeds when he was developing a computer game. He says he couldn't release it because he was locked in legal action with another games company. Julia tells him to drop the case, as the games company is actually a subsidiary of Izon, who it turns out she represents. They have bonded by this point, and they begin to make love, their skin becoming older and older as they do so.
Kate and Sasha come upon a room in which they are all dead (including Kate and Sasha), seemingly rotted a fair bit too. Kate tries to find a safe exit to the room but repeatedly sees the alternate reality in which the Colonel had hanged himself instead of being saved. She also sees the room in which Julia and Max are in a loving clinch, but dead beyond belief, as time was going faster for them.
Then it's just Sasha, Kate and Simon still alive. Kate and Sasha are separated from Simon. Kate is trying to figure out how to escape, Sasha makes a knowing comment about how its impossible which forces her to admit she is the hacker Alex Trusk (who the other characters had assumed was male or non-existent) who helped create the Hypercube. When she found out they were putting people into the Cube she had tried to blow the whistle, but they chased her and she escaped inside the Cube (the one place they wouldn't dare go). The detective appears in the next portal Kate opens. He is pretty insane by this point. He tries to bring her into his room, whilst holding his bloody knife as a threat. Kate pushes him away and stabs him in the eye with his knife. Simultaneously a "second" Simon crawls through the opposite portal. He has a scarred eye from the stabbing and looks a lot older, with several wristwatches round his arm, collected from the multiple times he has killed (and eaten?) Jerry. He takes Sasha hostage then breaks her neck. Kate uses the looping room to kill him by jumping on him from behind. She looks at the watch and realises the number she has seen allover the place including the dead scientists body is the time at which the Hypercube will collapse. She takes Sashas tag as the Hypercube collapses in on itself and then jumps through a portal into black space. We then find her coming out of a large pool of liquid mercury. She reports to some official looking men and it seems she is then aware once more of the reason she was put into the Cube - to find Sasha. She gives Sashas tag to a military man and then gets shot in the head (she is not aware this is about to happen).

Phil Brook