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Box, The
EMAILPRINTWarner Bros. Pictures
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 23 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 36 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Horror | Sci-fi | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Richard Kelly
Directed by: Richard Kelly
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 6, 2009
Running Time: 115 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence and disturbing images
Starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella
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 be the consequences? The year is 1976. Norma Lewis is a teacher at a private high school and her husband, Arthur, is an engineer working at NASA. They are, by all accounts, an average couple living a normal life in the suburbs with their young son...until a mysterious man with a horribly disfigured face appears on their doorstep and presents Norma with a life-altering proposition: the box. With only 24 hours to make their choice, Norma and Arthur face an impossible moral dilemma. What they don't realize is that no matter what they decide, terrifying consequences will have already been set in motion. They soon discover that the ramifications of this decision are beyond their control and extend far beyond their own fortune and fate. (Warner Bros.)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The Box is a mess, but it's a curiously haunting, intriguing, brain-tickling mess, and it delivers that "Donnie Darko" feeling in truckloads. Or should that be rocketloads?
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This movie kept me involved and intrigued, and for that I'm grateful. I'm beginning to wonder whether, in some situations, absurdity might not be a strength.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The Box is the work of a visionary flirting with commercialism after having so grandly flouted it with “Southland Tales.’’ He doesn’t give in completely. Several trips to the megaplex might be required for The Box to make complete sense.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Whenever The Box threatens to crash, Kelly summons up another haunting image or heartfelt, albeit thin, moral inquiry. It’s an unwieldy, ambitious, one-of-a-kind film waiting for a cult to find it.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
The Box turns into a kind of sacrilegious Christian fable; it’s haunted by God, but it delivers a vicious doctrine. At the risk of impoliteness, I would suggest that Kelly drop his reliance on religio-mystico-eschatological humbug and embrace, in realistic terms, the fantastic possibilities in ordinary acts of murder, fear, heroism, and death. If he pulls himself together, he could be the next Hitchcock.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
For his third feature, Richard Kelly delivers neither a triumph (like his first, Donnie Darko) nor a travesty (like his second, Southland Tales) but a sure-handed genre piece that manages to wrap up before its plot mushrooms completely out of control.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Despite its flaws, The Box remains intriguing; however, as its mysteries are solved, the prevailing sense is one of frustration rather than satisfaction. That makes The Box worthy of the dubious label of "an interesting failure."
Read Full Review >Film Threat Matthew Sorrento
The revelation of the film's mystery just barely makes sense. Yet, we dismiss it as an extended MacGuffin, and thus can delight in the film's devious turns.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
What a shame that Kelly's pacing doesn't run as fast as his imagination. Instead of sweeping you along, The Box just sits there like something unclaimed at lost and found. Damaged goods.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Sincere and sinister and inevitably ambitious, a serious work that insists on its own seriousness even when it edges toward the preposterous.
Read Full Review >Variety Jordan Mintzer
Kelly's trademark mix of sci-fi, surrealism and suburbia occasionally entertains.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Kelly is devoted to telling his stories visually -- except when he's not. And the second half of The Box, unfortunately, underscores everything Kelly, as a filmmaker, wants to be and just can't.
Read Full Review >Slate John Swansburg
The Box plays like "The Pardoner's Tale" as retold by the conspiracy theorist haunting your neighborhood Radio Shack.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
It's no coincidence that The Box plays like the world's murkiest Twilight Zone episode. It's loosely based on ''Button, Button,'' a short story by Richard Matheson, who wrote some of the series' greatest scripts.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf
"Southland Tales" was a soporific mess, and while The Box (based on material by novelist Richard Matheson) is superior by a certain margin, Kelly derails his newfound discipline with the usual shimmering portals and hazy notions of apocalyptic sacrifice.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
An artistic fiasco that cuts across genre lines and all logic to become, perhaps, an instant midnight movie.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
It's a mess and it might cost him some career freedom, but at least Kelly hasn't cashed in his trademark narrative complexity for Hollywood pap.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
The characters in The Box are like cardboard cutouts: Some have "foolish victim" labeled on them, and others fall into the category of absurdly creepy villain.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The pacing throughout is languid. Your eye becomes fixated on the hideous 70s wallpaper behind them. If only the story's interstellar narrative developments had the intensity of that wallpaper. Rod Serling might've gotten a great hour out of it (the story, that is, not the wallpaper). It simply is not two hours' worth, no matter how many quantum leaps into the unknown Kelly takes.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
The new Richard Kelly movie is basically a sock of coal for Christmas.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey
What the plot doesn't decimate, the film's slower-than-a-clogged-drain pacing does. Sadly, this is one box that's just not worth picking up off the porch, much less opening, not even for a million dollars.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
After a slightly promising start, this great-looking but ultimately deeply confusing and unscary sci-fi/horror opus turns into a quite boring rehash of M. Night Shyamalan's post-"Signs" films.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
The Box is its own kind of awful, a disconnected mess that never finds its reason for being.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 4.2 (out of 10) based on 36 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Max L gave it a6:
The last third undone whatever was interesting in the premise of the absurd story. Acting was decent and the setting in the 70's was nicely done. Watch the "Twilight Zone" episode for a better version.
Regina F gave it a0:
Worst. Movie. Ever.
Larry D gave it a10:
How this is not at least a 60 on metacritic is beyond me. This is a spectacular film: brilliant cinematography, excellent screenwriting, amazing sets, and great acting. Moreover, the library scene is one that will go down as one of the most unique and well executed scene in the history of American film. Much like Southland Tales, critics seem to AFRAID to give Kelly the accolades he deserves. For me, as a fan of his work, I think that he is one of the best film makers working in the United States today. What is sad is that our culture is to ignorant to recognize this. The box is a critique of American modernity and perhaps America is still not ready to reflect on the symptoms of sick society. An excellent film that I highly recommend. It's a thinker!
R P gave it an8:
An excellent, thought-provoking movie but there's a catch - it's not for everyone. In fact if you have no interest in existential philosophy, it will probably just give you a headache. Be prepared to think outside The Box.
Jamie S gave it a0:
Worst acting I've ever seen. The accent is made it not believable. It made no sense. I felt like WTF the whole way except the beginning. The beginning was good and then it started making no sense as the movie progressed. It is worth a big fat zero. James Marsden is hot though.
Todd H gave it a9:
This is one of the more thoughtful, creative, interesting, albeit bizarre films I have seen in a long time. I'm sorry if there was too much going on for some viewers to follow (i.e. those that went expecting a "movie" instead of a "film"). This is art- from the cinematography to the music to the combination of moral fable, sci-fi, and suburban horror. If I were teaching a film as literature course I would use this as one of the films- and have students draw from Milgram's Shock Experiment & Sartre's No Exit in explicating it. Tons of material for philosophical and sociological discussion/analysis. Loved it!
Jim F gave it a4:
Richard Kelly takes a perfectly comprehensible, and enjoyable, "Twilight Zone" episode (from a Richard Matheson story) and extends it into an incomprehensible, sleep-inducing feasture film that isn't just oblique but distasteful. I was in the minority in not liking "Donnie Darko", but it was well-made and intelligent enough to make me hope that "The Box" might be a pleasant surprise. It wasn't, the main mystery being how Kelly got major studio backing for this far-out project.
