What is supposed to suggest a state of discomfort and unease feels more disjointed and frustrating than anything, and what's meant to be menacing soon turns laughable.
Comment
12/17/09
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The Box (2009)
44
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:124
Fresh:55
Rotten:69
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: Imaginative but often preposterous, The Box features some thrills but largely feels too piecemeal.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating]
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:Nov 6, 2009 Wide
Box Office: $14,961,931
Synopsis: What if someone gave you a box containing a button that, if pushed, would bring you a million dollars…but simultaneously take the life of someone you don’t know? Would you do it? And what would... [More]
Starring: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn
Director: Richard Kelly
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Reviews for The Box
The acting is stiff, the special effects look cheap and the dialogue is unintentionally funny.
12/11/09
For the first half-hour the movie is engagingly mystifying in a David Lynch vein. Subsequently it modulates into a piece of didactic transcendental science-fiction in the manner of The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters.
12/11/09
The Box is by no means as indigestible as Southland Tales, and there's as much to relish as there is to groan at.
12/11/09
The most disturbing thing here is the yellow, oval-patterned 1970s wallpaper
12/08/09
A potentially clever idea becomes a pretentious trip into the director's own obsessions.
12/08/09
...I walked into a Cameron Diaz film expecting to be treated to shlock, and concluded that I had just witnessed the rebirth of the classical sci-fi/thriller.
12/06/09
Movie Marmite. Many will be perplexed. Donnie Darko fans should lap it up.
12/04/09
While it’s true that the film’s sci-fi antics are far from watertight in the logic department, there’s enough eccentricity and ambition at play to charm and bemuse in equal measure.
12/04/09
Think very carefully before you attempt to unlock the mysteries of The Box. There is no going back, you cannot undo your decision, you will never get back those 115 minutes, and by the horrifying end, those same 115 minutes will feel like a life sentence.
12/04/09
The clueless and overreaching ambition which has started to characterise [Richard Kelly's] cinematic failures comes into play again.
12/04/09
This film just goes interminably on and on, like some pop video to a prog rock track from hell, padding things out to feature length with all sorts of incredible gibberish and extraneous nonsense.
12/04/09
Kelly’s obsessions are not entirely like anyone else’s, which is a recommendation of sorts, and he shoots more beautifully than ever, which is another. I won’t give up on him when his films are still this richly textured and high on their own ideas.
12/04/09
Sinister, tense and at times ridiculous, The Box is a warped genre piece – Kelly’s homage to 1970s science-fiction, with all the wobbly effects, timid housewives and pseudo-religious imagery that suggests.
12/04/09
A certain faecal word certainly sums up the artistic merits of The Box, a tedious and often excruciating production from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly.
12/04/09
So shudder to think what [Matheson would] make of this dogs' dinner of an adaptation by Richard Kelly, a shambles rivalled only by the writer-director's own Southland Tales.
12/04/09
Richard Kelly returns with a tense, unnerving and jumpy thriller. It loses focus towards the end, but Donnie Darko has just entered The Twilight Zone.
12/04/09
This cosmic joke isn't as bad as Kelly's previous picture, Southland Tales, but it's still a total mess, even if it is a stylish looking one.
12/04/09
People start wandering about in a zomboid fashion but no one notices. The acting deteriorates into overwrought melodramatics. The plot gets sillier and sillier, and makes less and less sense. The Box should be taken away in one, and speedily buried.
12/04/09
Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko made him famous, but to judge by this unhappy mess he's having trouble confirming his talent.
12/04/09
Latest News for The Box
November 05, 2009:
Critics Consensus: A Christmas Carol Dazzles But Disappoints
This week at the movies, we've got some modern-day Dickens (Disney's A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman); a button-pushing thriller (The Box, starring... More...
November 03, 2009:
Richard Kelly Talks The Box 
It's been a long and somewhat bumpy ride getting "The Box" to theaters, but director Richard Kelly is finally on the verge of releasing his latest film. He talks about the... More...
October 29, 2009:
Richard Kelly chats about The Box
Richard Kelly's no stranger to the mysterious whims of fate. His first feature, Donnie Darko, flopped upon initial release, only to live on as one of the decade's most beloved... More...
September 28, 2009:
New: Brand New Movie Trailer/Poster
More...
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