Richard Kelly's "The Box"

[Ethros]

I've looked and I've looked and I can't find another thread on this, so apologies if there already is one. Odd as it came out over a month ago in America.

Anyway, Richard Kelly's (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales) latest film The Box came out on Friday in the UK, and I went to see it yesterday.
Anyone else seen this?

SOME SPOILERS
I'm not one to write out extensive reviews, but I'll say I did enjoy it. Thing is, after his two previous films, I went in totally expecting there to be some weird, unexplained stuff in this, and of course once the button is pressed that's just what we get

I'd heard this got some pretty mixed reviews. And I can understand why someone would hate it. If one just went to see this not knowing who the director is and his previous work and were just expecting a normal "thriller" movie, I'm sure they'd would indeed walk out the cinema thinking "what the fuck was that shit?!"

However like I say, knowing his work I enjoyed it for what it was. For example as soon as I saw those water column things I thought of the stuff in Donnie Darko (especially the Directors Cut) of water being a link between dimensions or whatnot.
And hell, it was a lot easier to follow than Southland Tales!

Some great performances from Diaz & Marsden, and I can't say I was ever bored throughout.
It was obvious that the indentity of Arlington Steward's employers would be left a mystery (aliens, Martians, a higher power, God?) kinda like in Donnie D, but the whole thing of testing the human race seemed a bit left hung in the air with what would happen next

 

[stonester1]

I very much enjoyed it, thought it an interesting touch to make it a 70s period piece.

I love Kelly's work and saw this film as Kelly's attempt to make a more "mainstream" thriller. But wait...even then, it's still more accessible than Southland Tales, or even Donnie Darko.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

I enjoyed it, and went just because it was a Matheson story. However, i spent much of the movie looking at the 70s era props. These people were supposed to have money problems, but they have a TV in the kitchen? A remote control for the TV? Power windows in the car?

 

[JacksonArcher]

I had mixed feelings about The Box. After the flop that was Southland Tales, Richard Kelly was apparently trying to take his own artistic sensibility and mix it with something that was a bit more accessible and commercially broad. In my opinion, he failed. The movie had a good first act -- the act that was based upon Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button" , the act in which James Marsden and Cameron Diaz's characters struggle with this moral delimma -- but honestly after that, which was all Kelly's addition, it just became so convoluted and downright dull and uninteresting that I lost interest really quickly.

The third act picked things up again, by non-surprisingly returning to the moral delimma of the first act, and that's when things returned to a sense of thematic normalcy and you began to care about the central characters again. My only problem is that everything leading up to that climax was just so pisspoor handled that I didn't care as much as I wanted to. I liked the characters, but I didn't like them enough to feel affected by what they went through. I felt it was all very programmed and fake, and that rubbed me the wrong way.

Regardless, this is Richard Kelly's most polished work to date. The cinematography, set design, and music (very Bernard Herrmann-esque) was lavishly done. The performances by Marsden and Diaz are, again, very good. There was just something about it that screamed mediocrity to me. It just kind of fell flat in my opinion.

 

[Holoaddict]

I rather enjoyed the movie myself. Once I saw that the guy behind Donnie Darko was also behind this, I knew it would be one hell of a weird ride. It did not disappoint.

I must also give praise to the people behind the advertising campaign. This is the first time in a long while that I can remember the trailers NOT giving away most, if not all, of the plot to the movie before you even see it. I found that to be most refreshing, and I wish more trailers would follow this example.