The Box

Richard Kelly's latest supernatural thriller "The Box" is creepy, strange and overall sinister, yet not very coherent or focused. One's opinion on the movie depends on whether one accepts its peculiar concept or not. I must say that I was initially enthralled by the movie's strange old-fashioned tone resembling sci-fi movies from the 1970s Kelly pays homage to. The movie handles its mystery rather well with Frank Langella's uniquely scary performance being the obvious highlight. Given that, the movie falters at the end when its otherwise intriguing concept gets bogged down by the series of ridiculous events that feel as if they were taken from a different movie. While The Box tends to approach the wrong territory and is rather unfocused, one can't help but acknowledge Kelly's ability to attract the viewer's attention. His obsessions may not be shared by very many people, but he manifests them in a richly textured manner. That's just enough to enjoy this movie despite its shortcomings. 6.5/10 (B-)

As a fan of science fiction allegory, social experiment, "The Twilight Zone" and the thriller genre -- no less all those elements combined -- Richard Kelly and his film "The Box" should've at least won me over, but it doesn't. It can't even decide if it wants to remain completely mysterious or explicitly tell us what's going on and any film that has to contemplate that is too complex for its own good.

With any story this daring, there's potential for something meaningful. "The Box" does let you glimpse it and draw a few interesting conclusions, but through intellectual jail bars placed before our eyes by the myriad of plot contrivances. In other words, too many plot elements exist in in the film that keep us from ever putting our mind around what Kelly is trying to say. Although he starts simply by focusing on a couple (James Marsden and Cameron Diaz) and their child making an ethical decision, the scope widens to include everything from Arthur C. Clarke references to mindless drones to some indiscernible notion of the afterlife.

This beginning piece is based on Richard Matheson's story "Button, Button," which was a short story turned into a "Twilight Zone" episode. In "The Box," a mysterious man with a half-burned face played by Frank Langella drops off a box with a button in it at the doorstep of Norma and Arthur Lewis and their son Walter. He later comes back and gives Norma a proposition: don't press the button and nothing happens, or press the button and receive one million dollars and subsequently someone, anywhere in the world, whom they don't know will die.

Well, Norma, a teacher, just lost her teacher tuition discount for her son and Arthur's application to be an astronaut was just denied and despite living in a nice looking house in Richmond, Virginia they apparently have no money, so it's not hard to figure out ultimately what they'll do. After all, don't press the button and there's no film -- not that some people who sit through this would've minded that in retrospect.

As with his cult hit "Donnie Darko," Kelly keeps "The Box" fascinatingly creepy. It starts with the colors, the classic string soundtrack from the band Arcade Fire and some peculiar Easter eggs and moves on to more jarring occurrences. There is never a point where things get so absurd that you don't care what happens in the end, even if there's a chance the end could be terribly unsatisfying. It's one of few saving graces for "The Box," but perhaps even this is only for those intrigued by high concept sci-fi mystery that parallels human nature no matter how vague.

When any thriller collapses somewhere after the midway point, you can usually blame the fact that too many occurrences in need of explaining were written in order for the writer to achieve his desired end. When James Marsden gets hit in a car by a truck and comes out of a giant light warehouse and that ultimately never gets explained, its degrading to the viewer.

The real trouble with "The Box" is how ambitiously it tries to combine the ideas of intelligent life/space exploration with religious notions of life, death and what might come after as well as numerous other elements too many and too difficult to explain. Kelly found that balance between time travel and inter-relationship drama in "Donnie Darko" but "The Box" implodes on itself by severing its little social experiment from the characters with too much unexplained phenomena.

~Steven C

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It seems that most either hate or love this film with nothing in between. I have seen people say it was "hateful" or "they didn't understand the ending" I will simply say, a number of people just did not understand the film at all.

I personally thought it was better than Donnie Darko, as Kelly went out of his way to be weird for the sake of it in that film. This seemingly had a bit more meaning behind it.

To those who found the script hateful, it simply isn't do not allow that opinion to keep you from watching this movie. If anything the script shows you that greed and the error of our ways do have consequences and could harm those we love. That isn't hateful, but more of a message alerting us that our every decision is indeed important.

Do not be scared away by those who ranked the film at four and below, this is a movie for those who want to be challenged to think outside the normal boundaries of everyday thought. If you're up to that challenge it's worth seeing, although certain areas could be done better.

It was nice to see Cameron do a serious role, but she did seem at times rusty at portraying some of the emotions needed for such a role. At others she nailed what she needed to deliver. James Mardsen (Arthur Lewis) and Frank Langella (Arlington Steward) both delivered consistent performances.

The movie that ended the career of the director Richard Kelly. It was never a really promising career, Donnie Darko must have been a stroke of luck. The original Twilight Zone episode The Box was way better and all the additional material in this movie does not improve on it, with subplots that don't resolve into anything. The script is just poorly written, with a lot of illogical situations and thin characters. The movie overall is not horrible, just don't have any high expectations from it.

After I heard how terrible this film was, I really wasn't expecting much. I almost didn't even rent it, but I am glad I did. I love Donnie Darko and I think with The Box, Kelly has gone back to the Darko style of writing and directing. I am not sure why it received so many bad reviews, maybe because like Donnie Darko it was too cerebral for the mainstream. It's not a movie you can do three things and watch, you have to pay attention to the little details. I do feel there are missing pieces that weren't explained, but that could be the way the film was edited and may come out later in a directors cut edition, or it could be Kelly's way of keeping the audience guessing. I can see how this movie wouldn't appeal to the masses, especially since it is a cautionary tale of morals and ethics, but if you liked Donnie Darko, you will probably enjoy The Box. I can see this having a cult following like Donnie Darko.

Also I am not a Cameron Diaz fan, but I think she did a great job. I had heard awful things about her performance in this, but in my opinion this was one of her better roles.