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October 21st

The Box

Directed By: Richard Kelly


One day a stranger shows up on the doorstep of a young couple's house. In his hand is a box, a box with a button. He tells them, they can push the button or to leave it alone. If they decide to push the button, two things will happen. One, they will receive one million dollars in cash and two, someone will die. If they choose not to push the button, they will receive no money, but will no one will die. They have exactly 24 hours to choose.

This entry is a little bit of a cheat, since it deals more closely to sci/fi or a thriller than horror per say, but I think the decisions made in this film and the results of those decisions are horrific and do classify.

Richard Kelly really exploded onto the scene with Donnie Darko, a film that has picked up a lot of love over the years and has become a cult favourite of many. Those people eagerly anticipated his next feature, which turned out to be the utterly dreadful, confusing and all around terrible film, Southland Tales. His third attempt at reclaiming whatever glory people bestowed upon him in his debut, was The Box, a drawn out feature length version of a really great short story.

The difficult decision to push the button or not is settled within the first 30 minutes. The rest of the film is the result of their decision. I'm assuming everyone knows what their choice was because it would be a pretty boring film is they didn't. What starts off as an interesting twilight zone of a story, quickly turns into a weird science fiction flick that confuses people. The Box has some interesting ideas, but doesn't seem interested in exploring any of those. Kelly seems more focused on trying to capture the weirdness and abstract feel of his first film. He doesn't succeed.

I'm not ashamed to say that I didn't understand much of the film. Does Kelly? I was entertained, somewhat, by the film at times. It is a film that I can see disappointing a lot of people, I oddly found the end result to be a halfway decent film. Loose ends to get tied up, but the road to get there is one bumpy road my friends. One of the things that I found interesting was that when the final act hits, I was wondering what I would do in this situation. Props for that at least.

I want to see Richard Kelly direct a straight forward narrative for once. Maybe that will finally settle the question of 'is he a good filmmaker or not?" With Donnie Darko blowing people away, Southland Tales disappointing everyone and The Box underwhelming mostly everyone. The jury may still be out a bit. While he hasn't done anything since, I'm interested to see what he might do.