The Box

Name: The Box
Genre: Drama
Released: November 11, 2022
Duration: 92 min
Rating: 80
Cast: Cristina Zulueta, Elián Gonzalez, Hatzín Navarrete, Hernán Mendoza

2022

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Generally favorable reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews

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Movie Details & Credits

MUBI | Release Date: November 11, 2022 | Not Rated

Starring: Cristina Zulueta, Elián Gonzalez, Hatzín Navarrete, Hernán Mendoza

Summary: Teenager Hatzín travels from Mexico City to collect the remains of his father, found in a communal grave in Northern Mexico. But a casual encounter with a man who he shares a physical resemblance with introduces both doubt and hope around the truth.

Director: Lorenzo Vigas

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 92 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

David Rooney

Sep 17, 2021

An acutely observed chamber piece played out by two exceptionally well-cast actors who keep you guessing about the subtle shifts in their characters’ relationship, this is an unflinching account of human lives rendered disposable by greed and corruption. Read full review

Beatrice Loayza

Nov 10, 2022

The Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas’s The Box weaves some of the greatest horrors of modern Mexican life into an unsettlingly cryptic thriller. Read full review

Michael Talbot-Haynes

Feb 6, 2023

There is this marvelous hard-boiled narrative style Vigas employs, with long periods without dialogue and little exposition. The way the intrigue is built as the picture progresses almost takes us into thriller territory. This is the cinematic storm the filmmaker creates here when a child’s yearning meets the brutality of an outlaw land. Read full review

The Playlist Carlos Aguilar

Sep 17, 2021

The Box lacks the sort of ardor that made From Afar so memorable. Here, not all the major beats amount to substantial commentary on this relationship or the context. However, there are choices and plot elements that confirm the director’s narrative sagacity. Read full review

The Guardian Leslie Felperin

Nov 8, 2022

Director Lorenzo Vigas, who collaborated on the script with Paula Markovitch and Laura Santullo, adeptly manoeuvres things so that the film slides effortlessly from mystery to criminal story to quasi-Greek tragedy, changing registers with subtle alterations of tone. The landscape – vast, desiccated, menacing – is practically a character in its own right, full of inscrutable secrets like Hatzín’s own deadpan face. Read full review

Movie Nation Roger Moore

Nov 15, 2022

The new film from award-winning Venezuelan filmmaker Lorenzo Vigas is a lean, quiet and disturbing parable about global capitalism as it is practiced in much of the Third World. Read full review

The Film Stage Ethan Vestby

Nov 11, 2022

Only touching on something interesting formally in the hum of factory machines and the depressing deadness of low-rent diners, it feels like the kind of work where one uses the descriptor “well-made” as a backhanded compliment. The director pulls off his “vision,” but frankly it doesn’t seem that hard to think up. Read full review

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bertobellamy

Nov 16, 2022

'The Box' delves into the lives of ordinary people in Mexico to show how violence affects them psychologically or morally.

Lorenzo Vigas presents us with a devastating story about a boy whose father was found in a common grave. After recovering his remains, he runs into a man who looks like'The Box' delves into the lives of ordinary people in Mexico to show how violence affects them psychologically or morally.

Lorenzo Vigas presents us with a devastating story about a boy whose father was found in a common grave. After recovering his remains, he runs into a man who looks like him, and from there the director and co-writer unfolds a mystery and a tragic truth that reveals a decadent society in which you can only be a victim or a victimizer.

The film can be seen as a companion piece to 'Identifying Features,' since both hide the crude truth of which I spoke; while the other movie is superior, this one also handles the mystery and naturalistic performances well.

In the end, the lack of a father figure becomes the core of the story; the dilemma faced by the young protagonist exposes the vulnerability that crime takes advantage of to swell his ranks.

The last scene offers something of a chance at redemption, but the price to pay is too high.… Expand

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