All Critics (142)
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Top Critics (19)
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Fresh (65)
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Rotten (79)
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DVD (3)
Kelly treats what is essentially a Stanford University psychology experiment with inflated somberness.
Is it an odd film? Certainly. Will it creep you out more than it engages you? Probably. Should we be rewarding folks who are willing to step out of bounds and make us think? Definitely.
Whatever you do, do not accept delivery of The Box, a package that doesn't know where it is going nor how to get there.
Kelly has talent, but for his next movie, he might try coming down to earth and forgetting about the people who control the lightning.
I think Kelly is a very inventive writer and I think he is his own worst enemy behind the camera.
I think that Richard Kelly, from one film to the next, has gone in some very interesting and sometimes puzzling directions.
Total head-scratch entertainment.
Richard Matheson probably wouldn't care for Kelly's adaptation too much because it certainly goes its own way. It's not perfect; it's a little slow and plodding and has a few characters that don't add much to the overall affect. But it's still quite good.
Here's one box you don't want to open.
The consequence of free will is examined in Richard Kelly's mind bending morality tale, The Box.
I'd like to think there is a director's cut coming at some point to fill in the gaping holes.
"Somebody get Richard Kelly a Katherine Heigl romantic comedy stat, or else we might have yet another talented filmmaker unable to wiggle free from his own cavernous pretension."
Kelly runs The Box a little too closely to the themes of The Day the Earth Stood Still, although it does have something more cynical to say about humanity.
[Richard] Matheson's original story was a short, sharp piece with a very direct point. Kelley simply uses it as a jumping off point for his own dense, weird and oddly personal "what-if" tale.
Kelly stretches a perfectly good 22-minute television episode out to two hours with an insane barrage of red herrings and metaphysical sci-fi mumbo-jumbo
It is a film that wants to be profound but it ends up feeling more like a lesser episode of The X Files.
[Director Kelly] ventures boldly into the ludicrous, and comes out the other side with an even more sinister conclusion.
All moral conflicts and creepy allusions are lost in a barrage of ridiculous plot devices, and a story that makes absolutely no sense...
'Seventies wallpaper in high-def!
...it wants very much to be a moral allegory more than it does a riveting sci-fi/horror show, but it fails on both counts. (Blu-ray Edition)
For those willing to follow Kelly down all the rabbit holes his warped imagination contrives, there are small treasures to be found here and there.
...promises more than it delivers, ultimately providing a muddled narrative that does nothing to convince us of its moral positions.
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