Box

A great film made by Matt Shaw and Maria. Really well done on the visuals and storytelling in this one. If you're a fan of films like Oldboy and Saw then you'll love this. Keep watching until the very end. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

About ten minutes in, I thought this was a duffer. I hated the voice outside of the box and the protagonist (who also wrote and directed it) wasn't really my cup of tea. It was taking me out of the moment and stopping me engaging, until.... it didn't. I suddenly found myself an hour in completely in the zone. I'm not claiming that it's incredibly well done or executed, because in a lot of ways it isn't. It probably didn't have a lot of money in its defence. But it pulled me along for the ride and I never got bored, which is impressive for a single person / location film. Not a bad time from Matt Shaw.

I read Matt Shaw's book years ago and read it again when he announced he was making it into a film. While the idea of the man being stuck in a box is the same, the reasons as to why he was in the box are different from film to box which caught me by a pleasant surprise as it meant I hadn't seen the ending coming. Nice to see Matt do more acting in this one although he has made it clear on his pages that it won't be something we see much of. Nice camera work and his direction is certainly getting stronger with each film he does. Looking forward to the next one which I also backed.

So Matt Shaw, stuck in a box for around 70 odd minutes... Doesn't sound the most promising, yet it all fits together extremely well.

The camerawork was claustrophobic and the editing was on point, never really giving any opportunity to let you get over the previous scene.

Shaw shows some good acting throughout, especially the more, gag enducing scenes. And holds up the movie alone very well.

There are some scenes I would love to comment on, but I do not want to spoil anything. This one is best to go into blind... And empty stomached.

Considering the small set and cast this works extremely well, and feels much bigger in terms of production value, than it probably is.

Very entertaining, can't wait for future work off Shaw and his team.

It's clearly meant to have been a simple, but deep and thought-provoking movie. I've seen a fair few of those. This isn't one of them.

It was, frankly, rather boring, with face-value dialogue and meaning. Nothing much original about it. The acting wasn't awful, but it was mediocre - think am-dram. It didn't capture any real emotion - it just felt fake. This left you not caring about the main protagonist at all.

Without any spoilers, the finale wasn't worth the long wait. The movie was gross in places, which would have been absolutely fine, but it wasn't done in any interesting way.

The man is kept in an 'inescapable' box - made from thin mdf panels and some chicken-wire. It would have been more believable if they'd, perhaps, made it look metallic.

In terms of the cinematography, the chromatic filters stripped the red colour out of the movie, leaving an unappealing blue-green-yellow hue that wasn't pleasant to look at for long periods (even black & white would have been more appealing to watch).

I just kept wanting the movie to end, hoping for a decent twist at the end. That never came.

Giving it 2 stars as I think 1 star may be a little unfair. But it really can't get any more than 2.

I simply cannot recommend spending over an hour sitting through this. Save yourselves.