The Box

Here is a movie I was excited to see prior to its release,which unleashed a torrent of bad reviews .Director Richard Kelly has,like any other great filmmaker, polarized.His cult hit Donnie Darko banked on dark imagery and a plot that willfully tested logic,whereas box-office flop Southland Tales was a horrifying mess of silly conspiracies and flimsy dialog.

And as a director,he's stuck to a certain method to which The Box adheres to quite rigidly.At the root,it is a story about a financially troubled suburban couple who are given a box,wherein lies a button that if pressed makes two things happen: the couple receives $1 Mil,thereby solving all their monetary woes,but with a price: someone they don't know, dies.It starts off tight,fixated on this simple premise,but too soon does the plot become tedious and convoluted,not always with a purpose.

Strangers appear without explanation,mutter or do something,to move the plot forward.Oh,and their noses bleed then.There is a clear beginning and an end,but no conceivable way to reconcile the two. What redeems this film is the director's clear vision of certain other elements: set in the late 70s,the entire reconstruction of this time period looks amazing.There's still a theatrical flair to it,Cameron Diaz' bizarre and ever-changing accent namely,but besides this the rest seem natural and unaffected.

Both Diaz and Mardsen seem earnest and sincere in their roles,except that I do feel that the latter lacks star power and has a lot of work to do before he can be perceived as a reliable leading man (possibly why Diaz' giant head dominates the poster).But more importantly,the plot is loose and undisciplined in terms of how the story unfolds,and the explanations offered.There's no human way to comprehend this,so as The Box reaches its final moments-having spent long and hard on a build-up that made no sense,the emotional climax resonates hollow and is completely unfelt.

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