The Box
Falling somewhere inbetween the promising Donnie Darko and the disasterous Southland Tales, The Box is essentially a very stylish bad movie. After the epic failure of Southland Tales, writer/director Kelly needed to make a film that would appeal to a wide enough audience to rescue his career and it appeared that The Box would be it. After seeing it I can say it’s just as idiosyncratic as his previous work with many familiar science fiction elements popping up. Based on the short story “Button Button”, the film plays like an episode of The Twilight Zone (for which the story was previously adapted) as directed by Dario Argento. There was a lot to admire in this film, Frank Langella is great, as is his makeup, there are some genuine scares and paranoid creepiness but the film also captured a sort of 70’s cheese so accurately it was hard to take seriously (and the film wanted to be taken seriously.)
