The Box

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Blu Ray

Richard Kelly is an enigmatic and challenging filmmaker. After directing a number of shorts, he created the truly eccentric cult masterpiece Donnie Darko. Darko is a film which has continued to challenge and confound and become a highly respected, if not controversial, cult classic. Kelly followed Darko with Southland Tales (2006), which was sadly not well received by the critics or at the box office. The Box (2009) continues to explore the themes that Kelly finds of interest and is marked by his own eccentric view of the world. At the same time it is a return to form and in my mind a resounding success. The cinematography is gorgeous, the characters nuanced and the plot mysterious. Kelly never creates a linear story and his films can be understood on many different levels, it is much the same with The Box.

The film is set in the Seventies as Kelly wanted to give the original short story “Button, Button” by sc-fi great Richard Matheson a solid grounding in reality. He has taken his father’s experiences in NASA and his mother’s health issues to weave a tale which melds together a very real world with a dark tale about morality. Early one morning before the sun rises a parcel is left on the doorstep of Norma and Frank Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden). It includes a strange and unusual locked box and a note stating that Mr.Steward will call on them at 5pm. At precisely 5pm Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) arrives with the key. He is well dressed, suave and clearly a man of great wit and wisdom, however he is marked by half of his face having been burnt away. He pays Norma $100 for her time and advises the rule of the game of which she has twenty four hours to play. If she presses the box’s red button she will receive a million dollars but someone in the world they do not know will die. There are rules to the game; they must not ask who is controlling the game, discuss the game outside themselves or try and communicate with the police or authorities.

The first section of the film develops the characters of Norma and Frank; we get inside their heads and come to appreciate the pressures they are under. Norma has a deformed foot, has lost the subsidy for her son at the school at which she works and Frank has been refused astronaut training at NASA due to failing a psych evaluation. These early explorations in character lead, of course, to Norma pushing the button. They are sceptical about what will happen next as Frank has opened the box and cannot see any communicate device attached to it. However, the next day the enigmatic Arlington Steward arrives and the cash is delivered. They have second thoughts but it is too late.

Things now get very strange. When Frank tries to find out more about Arlington Steward, Norma receives a phone call warning them off. It seems he has spies everywhere and moreover is able to use some method of mind control to make others do his will. The only sign they are under his control is a noise bleed after they have been used to fulfilled his need.

As the story unfolds it is superbly complex and mysterious, ranging from hints about alien intelligences to Sartre’s commentary on the earth being purgatory. We are left confused as to what exactly the Lewis’ are up against and this makes the tale even more enjoying. It does become clear that the human race is being tested but exactly by who or what is left up to us to decide. Even at the end of the film it is hard to decipher the exact meaning of what you have seen and this makes it a very different form of cinema.

Some people will find the lack of conclusiveness in The Box (and indeed in most of Kelly’s films) difficult, I find it challenging and thought provoking. In The Box Kelly takes religious themes about altruism, suffering and redemption and takes them outside of their normal genre and expresses them in a new and provocative way. This makes The Box a truly fascinating cinematic experience.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.2 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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