Box

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.

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.

Not too long and not too short. Some scenes repeated themselves a bit but in hindsight I think this added to what he was going through in the box where days are all the same. Liked the camera work with the varied shots. Given this was a film about a man in a box it could have been really easy for them to put the camera on a tripod and just film but not the case. Without spoilers I think the only way the budget was betrayed here was with the ending but it still didn't take anything away for me. Love Matt's books and it is nice to see him getting further involved with films.

Would be interesting to see what Purgatory Pictures could do with a bigger budget. With little money they keep bringing original content to their films which are a breath of fresh air to bigger budgeted mainstream films which feel like they are just copies of each other. The film isn't perfect (some scenes are acted better than others, some of the effects are clearly low budget and the editing could have been tighter in places) but for what they're trying to do, I think they are on the right tracks. I was entertained throughout and that's saying something given most "mainstream" films are a chore to get through.

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. I saw it through however but didn't enjoy it, but then I didn't mind the end bit. Naaaah... It was taking my 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 it's incredibly well done, because in a lot of ways it isn't. But it pulled me along for the ride and I never got bored, which is impressive for a single person / location film. Naaaaah...