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Bookmark this pageThe Box (2008)
Director: Richard Kelly
Movie review
From Time Out London
The latest film from ‘Donnie Darko’ director Richard Kelly arrives on these shores bearing the clawmarks of American critics. But don’t panic: while it’s true that the film’s sci-fi antics are far from watertight in the logic department, there’s enough eccentricity and ambition at play to charm and bemuse in equal measure. Building on the short story ‘Button, Button’ by ‘The Twilight Zone’ writer Richard Matheson, Kelly whisks us back to late 1970s Virginia. There we meet mid-ranking Nasa scientist Arthur (James Marsden) and his crippled schoolteacher wife, Norma (Cameron Diaz, below), whom Kelly recruits as two blow-dried lab rats for a deliciously overwrought interplanetary experiment. It begins when Frank Langella (missing a left cheek) knocks on their door, drops off a contraption with a red button on it and says that if they push the button, they’ll receive a million dollars – but someone they don’t know will die.Shooting for the technology-driven guilt-racking of Michael Haneke’s ‘Hidden’ – but achieving something closer to the hysteria of the ‘Saw’ films – Kelly comes unstuck whenever he strains to say something smart. Points, too, are deducted for mistaking cynicism for satire, as in his 2006 folly, ‘Southland Tales’. Yet Kelly’s crackpot-inventor approach to filmmaking (note the second-half pile-up of nosebleeding bodysnatchers, watery gateways to Hell and sundry Arthur C Clarke quotations) has produced a provocative, Lynch-lite paranoia flick that flaunts some fascinating ideas on the destructive power of technology, the bourgeois desire for conformity and the potential horrors of parenthood. It also features a great soundtrack by Arcade Fire.
Author: David Jenkins
Time Out London Issue 2050: 3-9 December, 2009
User reviews of this film
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- Norman Lowther said...
- Posted on Dec 27 2009 15:51 What a ghastly dreadful film which must be the turkey of the year ! Why did the talented Ms Diaz waste her time in such garbage ? Money probably ! Quite clearly the worst film since The Handmaids Tale which I had to endure many years ago.
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- usman khawaja said...
- Posted on Dec 14 2009 06:14 ok so how many movies did they hack to make this turkey from twilight zone to saw -and i felt really sorry for diaz -she deserves better than this -i kept sitting to make some sense of it but i think they were planning a sequel to this drastically dumb moral parable -so frank langella walked away with the BOX -it needs to be disposed off in outer space so no sequel can ever be squeezed out of this -though it had some interesting ideas to be fair and the acting was good but once is more than enough
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- Joe said...
- Posted on Dec 14 2009 00:34 One of the worst films I have ever seen in my life. Plot is all over the place and it's more or less impossible to make any sense of it. Unbelievably daft film.
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- Joe said...
- Posted on Dec 14 2009 00:32 One of the worst films I have ever seen in my life. Plot is all over the place and it's more or less impossible to make any sense of it. Unbelievable nonsense.
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- Aisley Leeman said...
- Posted on Dec 13 2009 16:16 did not enjoy it, was a bag of crap. i love fat women
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- flix said...
- Posted on Dec 12 2009 18:17 Norma and Arthur seem to be well to do regular people; she's a teacher and he's a NASA scientist but they could do with a bit more money - who couldn't? A box turns up on their doorstep followed up later by a guy with half a face; he offers them $1million if they press the button but the catch is someone will die if they do. Norma's been told her son's school fees are going to increase, so she goes for the button push - this is odd as her family are loaded. From then on in life for Norma and Arthur is a bowl of very bitter cherries. Humanity is being tested by an unknown and unseen alien presence - they use our weaknesses and strengths to have some fun at our expense; I want to see the follow up where their get their buts kicked.
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- phill said...
- Posted on Dec 07 2009 23:16 thought the concept of film ie alien theme wth idea of a game of chance was thought provoking,enjoyed it and well worth the ticket money
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Cast & crew
Director: Richard Kelly
Cast: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella full cast
Genre(s): Horror
Rated: 12A
Duration: 116 mins
UK Release: Dec 4 2009
US Release: Nov 13 2009
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