Warner Brothers | USA | 115 min.
I am still living in the enjoyable world of Donnie Darko when it comes to writer/director Richard Kelly. But after seeing his latest film, The Box, the film adaptation to Richard Matheson’s short story Button, Button, which Kelly adapted himself, I am beginning to fear that he’s never going to be able to achieve that level of filmmaking again. While The Box does deliver on the classic confusion aspect that the young director is so well known for, and does look pretty good doing it, much of the film is left unanswered and becomes intolerable.
The plot of The Box sounds really simplistic at the surface: man shows up, man gives couple a box with a button in it, man says if they push the button they receive untold amounts of wealth but someone will die, man leaves, couple decides what to do, etc, etc, etc. But that’s the first act; the decision of whether or not to push the button ends quite quickly. The movie suddenly becomes full of itself, presenting idea after idea and never giving any concern to how the audience is going to interpret it. I’m not usually against films that blatantly say their smarter than me, but I at least want the film to be respectful about it. This film never stops thinking that it’s above the audience and frankly, doesn’t care that it is.
The film will, often times, jump completely from one setting to another without so much as a line explaining how we got there. For example, in a random moment we are somehow taken from a car crash to an abandoned hanger and in the context of the film what happens involving that hanger. You begin to hate the film because it opens all these doors and never shuts a single one. Leaving things open to interpretation is very different than leaving them unexplained. Also, on that note, the film has no real ending. Like The Fourth Kind (though not nearly as atrocious) it feels like there’s an entire act missing from the movie. The ending is very abrupt and rushed. I really think Kelly just ran out of ideas.
At many points throughout the movie you hear elements referred to over and over again. By the end of the film you think you have an idea of what those things are but you’re so unsure that you just stop caring and the film just becomes forgettable. Take Frank Langella’s character for example. Over and over again he talks about his “employer.” Because the film doesn’t point you in any sort of direction as to who or what it might be you simply begin not to care.
I will say this for Kelly, he knows his way around a camera. He clearly knows the basic rules of making movies and knows just the right time to break those rules. But, in terms of actually providing intrigue and interest to the film through camera movement, lighting, sound, etc, the film falls flat on its face. But it looks good nonetheless. But as we all have learned time and time again, just looking good is not enough. Kelly utilizes his classic, campy-looking CG to full effect. The use of such story elements as water portals and facial deformities in a film like this has so much more potential than what Kelly was able to pull off.
As for the acting, it’s mediocre at best. Again, Langella is the best part of the film. But like the rest of the film he is deeply underdeveloped. The rest of the cast isn’t terrible, but they aren’t great by any means. It felt like they were just going through the motions and not actually putting some of themselves into their characters. This is all the fault of Kelly’s lackluster script, especially in regards to leads James Marsden and Cameron Diaz. If X3 taught us anything, it’s that Marsden needs a good script as well as decent direction in order pull off a decent performance. As for Diaz, there’s not much to say. She, like the rest of the movie, is forgettable and, except for the end of the first and third acts, serves no purpose what-so-ever. Especially in the moments where we are supposed to understand her character as a person, she becomes rather unreliable.
The Box is a film that fails to live up to its true potential. That isn’t for a lack of trying though. An unfortunately poor script thrown on top of a well-shot movie, Kelly has proven before that he is capable of amazing things, but you would never know it from this end result.
5 out of 10