I don't even know how to approach this. I am at a complete loss of words for how uninspiring and delusional this film was. I feel like it did a great disservice to the original film, and I am saddened by that idea. I really am, because while this film started great, it didn't end well. Additionally, the second half of this film seemed rushed and how the characters progressed seemed to be a bit of a cop out.

[spoiler]Let's start with the ending. Let's get this out of the way first, because I still don't know what's going on here. Usually this is okay, as with the first film, but this was just poorly executed here. The whole idea of Kate being an agent and Sasha having her own agenda is great. Loved that part. The implosion? Great. I loved that too. The part about Kate's mission being to retrieve a device from Sasha and later being killed to protect some information? Didn't like it. I didn't think it was well explained and I didn't think it fit the narrative.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]The original film kept the viewer inside of the cube. We never saw the outside; maybe it wasn't even outside that Kazan walked into. In this film, however, we are taken completely out of the cube _and_ we are shown a huge array of characters who have little meaning. We go from a nice cast of a handful of characters, true to the original film, and abruptly are shown twice that amount in _additional_ characters. That ruined my immersion and I feel sad.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Let's talk about how the characters die. The first half of the film kept a really good pace for this and characters died and a steady pace. Grim, but true. After that, the viewer is forced to accept a multiverse theory, which is okay, and is shown characters repeatedly dying. Still, kinda, okay, but now we're losing track of who our "original" characters are. This tries hard to break immersion, but it's saved somewhat by Kate realizing the watches in the end. Oh, and we still don't know who wrote all of the things on the walls. That was shown from the onset, and wasn't explained. I also feel that they ran out of time and killed off characters wayyy too quickly in the end. [/spoiler]

This is not a terrible film, but it definitely wasn't great and certainly wasn't as good as the original. It's worth the watch, still, but keep your expectations in check. It tried to do more than the scope of _Cube_ and I think that's why this film isn't as successful. If they had kept closer to the original structure, this would have fared much better. There's a lot more I could talk about today, but suffice to say, I didn't love this film. Watchable, especially because of the first, but not memorable.