Fascinating. Frustrating. Bizarre.Baffling. And Brilliant.

And At the heart of The Box is a simple, ethical dilemma. Press the button. Two things happen. Someone you don't know dies. And you receive $1 million dollars. Would you? Could you? What's your price?

 Think of it as a test, if you like. A test of character. Of morals. Of faith. Of what it is that makes us human.

So when a mysterious man, Mr. Steward, arrives one day at the house of a fairly ordinary suburban couple, with the above, simple, proposal, it changes their lives forever.

The Box isn't a film for everyone. Its slow, deliberate, and exacting. Its a film that will confuse, fascinate, intrigue, irritate and baffle many. In fact, its often deliberately obtuse, like a historical time capsule from the seventies.

Set in 1976, its authentic attention to period detail is utterly convincing - and this also extends stylistically into the film itself. None of this MTV generation fastcutting shakycam here - its all slow, deliberate, shots with a colour palette so seventies, it feels like the film itself was really shot back in 1976 and sat on a shelf for thirty years.

If anything, this film evokes a decade so long so, its now ancient history for all involved. Certainly at the more esoteric end of seventies paranoia and reds under the bed conspiracies, this film plays like a cross between many of those classics. Shades of Capricorn One lie in there, but the biggest reference points here would be the bugnuts mentalim of The Ninth Configuration, crossed with a heavy portion of Phil Kaufmans' 1978 classic version of Invasion of The Body Snatchers, but all written by Philip K Dick on a particularly paranoid day.

On paper, such comparisons don't seem to make obvious sense at first , but I assure you - there is more going on than a simple morality play here. Not all is what it seems to be, and the film is infused with so many layering of subtext, plot, and cultural referencing - french existentialist Jean Paul Satre in particular - it will be a rewarding experience to revist.  

This is no one watch film, but a film designed to be watched, and rewatched. They don’t make films like this anymore. They should. They really should.

Dense, multi layered, intelligent, fascinating, and downright eerie, with a spectacularly sinister yet subtle turn from Frank Langella, "The Box" is one of the most captivating, if bizarre films you'll watch in a long, long time. Out of place in todays climate of exploding robot blockbusters, its smart, sinister, and senstive. And It'll leave you thinking for a long time after you leave it.

Uneasy to watch, complex and difficult but rewarding and captivating, "The Box" could well one of the very best films of the year. It’s a shame no one watched it. If we don't got to intelligent, artfully made, finely detailed and captivating films like this, we deserve all the exploding robo nonsense we get. If anything, this film is just too damn good for a lot of people. After all, There's always Saw 6 in 4-D Smellovision in the next screen along. Who needs brains when you can have exploding, mashed up brains in gore all over the screen?

The Box is a film out of time, and out of place. And too damn good to be ignored. Captivating, confusingly, baffling and brilliant, it could well be film of the year.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 1.0 beta 2!