I avoid horror movies as a general rule. However, I was killing time
with my cousin during a visit to my grandparents’, and the 2009 Richard
Kelly thriller The Box came on after Date Night, the
comedy we’d been watching, so we decided to stick it out even though my
uncle warned us it was “freaky”. I figured with a PG-13 rating, it
couldn’t be too traumatizing. And really, it wasn’t, though I still was a
little nervous about going to sleep that night for fear a nightmare
might creep in…
Cameron Diaz is Norma Lewis, a sweet, pretty
Southern schoolteacher with a mangled foot. She and her husband Arthur
(James Marsden), who works for NASA, enjoy a comfortable, if rather
fiscally shaky, life with their pre-teen son Walter (Sam Oz Stone).
Christmas is on the horizon when a mysterious package arrives on the
porch. Inside the plain brown box is a contraption and a calling card.
The Lewises are about to receive a visit from the enigmatic Arlington
Steward (Frank Langella), a polite but ominous man with a deformed face.
His task is to inform them of the “financial opportunity” presented by
the box that they have been given. If they press the button, someone
they don’t know will die, and they will receive a million dollars. They
can’t tell anyone else about the offer or the deal is off. They have a
day to decide.
Norma and Arthur are decent, salt-of-the-earth
people, and it’s a little hard to believe that they would seriously
consider this long-distance homicide. But a combination of disbelief
that it will actually work and a sudden downturn in their fortunes
making the money seem particularly palatable pushes them to accept the
deal. And then the trouble really begins.
This is a mostly
psychological thriller that asks its audience to consider whether they
would accept such an offer and what the ramifications might be of a
society filled with people who would do such a thing. It’s not an
especially violent movie; we hear rumblings of a string of homicides but
don’t really see much. It reminded me a bit of Stephen King’s Needful Things,
only here, the temptation is far less personalized, and most of the
terrible things that happen are a result of people being forced to make a
difficult decision. It’s a sick experiment, and whoever is pulling the
strings has incredible power.
Langella gives the most compelling
performance as the serene but incredibly creepy courier. Is he behind
all of this, or is he too caught up in something bigger than himself?
While he is the one continually setting events into motion, it is
difficult to determine whether he is truly a villain. Diaz and Marsden
also deliver solid performances and are very believable as a couple. The
Lewises are flawed but likable, and it’s disturbing to watch them
descend into near-madness in the aftermath of their fateful decision.
Aside
from the main three, I was most interested in Arthur’s colleague Norm
Cahill (James Rebhorn) and the eerie family babysitter. I wasn’t too
impressed with Stone’s performance, but he wasn’t really in the movie
all that much. More than the side characters, the pop culture references
caught my attention. The movie includes several clips of shows from the
1970s, which roots us in a very particular time, and the search for
alien life is a major thread throughout the film. In some ways, I was
also reminded of The Day the Earth Stood Still, as I got the
impression that some sort of advanced civilization was observing
humanity and unsure of whether it deserved to remain in existence.
The
movie does get pretty weird toward the end, and there are at least a
couple of sequences that seem confusing and out of place. At times it
seemed to me as though it was trying to be two different movies.
Ultimately, though, it’s an interesting rumination on human nature. The
particulars of the experiment don’t always make a lot of sense, but the
general idea behind it is compelling. It’s a make-you-think kind of
movie, and if nothing else, I expect that those who watch it may think
twice the next time they are tempted to do something that would benefit
themselves and hurt someone else.
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