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Not the Song by Orbital
By bukkhead | March 16, 2010
FILM REVIEW: ‘The Box’
Written and Directed by Richard Kelly
Based on the short story by Richard Matheson
Rated PG-13
115 mins.
I love my wife for lots of reasons, and even if we weren’t married, we’d be good friends for lots of those reasons. One is how she’s get obsessed with something. I don’t mean like a hobby, but more like an idea. I identify with the compulsion, and relish the journey it takes us on, regardless of the result.
She got obsessed with the idea of watching The Strangers, even though it’s a horror film and she knew it would creep her out and give her nightmares. But she was so damn curious. What was the deal with these people? Why were they doing what they did? Then the movie went on sale for cheap at some Blockbuster that was shutting down, so she took it as a sign. I would have preferred that the sign she saw was “only bad movies go on sale for this cheap.” But I was curious too, so I gladly watched the movie with her. Questions answered: zero. Oh well.
But it’s happened again, this time with The Box. You know this one: Cameron Diaz and James Marsden have a visitor, Frank Langella, who gives them a box and tells them that if they push the button inside, they’ll get a million dollars. And someone they don’t know will die. My wife talked about this movie for months. What was the deal? What’s the story behind the story? Is it some kind of morality play? Is it some kinda sci-fi freak out? Why is Langella’s face half burnt off?
So we rented it and, well, this time our questions were answered, but I gotta say, it was sort of a let down. I don’t want to give anything away here, but, if I had gone into the movie knowing a few things, it might have been more enjoyable. Not that it was horrible. Director Richard Kelly has a soft hand, paces things slow, knows how to let a simple scene, simple dialog, simple characters make up way more than the sum of their parts. One of his techniques, which is on the verge of becoming a cliché (but is not there yet, so not bad) is to have some creepy person just stand there and stare at you. Or walk behind you, horror-film stalker style.
But I would have liked to have known that this was guy who did Donnie Darko. Ah, that explains some of the pseudo-pulp-science-fiction stuff. And that this was based on a short story by Richard Matheson, who’s work had been used frequently in “The Twilight Zone.”
Then again, if I had known what the “explanation” was, I don’t think I would have bothered watching the movie. But if I had known I wouldn’t have wanted to see it for that reason, would I have watched it anyway? Probably. I’m arrogant, but also unashamed in my hypocrisy when it comes to meta-discourse.
The movie draws on allusions to Sartre’s play No Exit, with which I wasn’t familiar before I saw the movie, and I don’t know that I needed to. I’m familiar with it now, and truth be told, I think Kelly is stretching a bit, trying to say something about Existentialism. (Careful, near spoilers approaching). Certainly, any sci-fi work is more or less a commentary on modern man, and juxtaposing moral struggles with alien judgment is as good as extinguishing God and making mankind his own executioner. But existentialism in The Box is just a veneer, the kind of thing you slap on to make it shiny, to hide the dents. I would not, in the final analysis, call this an existential movie. It’s a Richard Kelly movie.
Topics: Movies |