The Box (2009)
Okay, spoiler warning, I guess. This isn't a movie I'll be recommending, at least not enthusiastically, but it's still neat, weird, and surprising. Kelly's fingerprints are all over this - it absolutely feels like a spiritual sequel to Donnie Darko, despite a different tone. Hell, if you sort tilt your head sideways you can imagine this being in continuity with Darko, though I doubt that was the intent.
The point being that, while I'm coming down on the side of "not quite good enough" to recommend tracking down, the movie does leave me hesitating before getting into specifics. If you've got more attachment to Kelly's other work or are simply curious from the vague hints I've written so far, this is when you'll want to jump ship, because even the goddamn genre of this thing might be a spoiler.
Or, since we're well into spoiler-country now, I can reveal that "genre" should be pluralized. Because this thing takes some turns. The first forty minutes are basically the underlying original story, and it's told with the sort of horror vibe you'd expect. After that, the movie starts leaning on some sci-fi elements that were established early on, transitioning into a sort of '70s paranoid thriller in the vein of Three Days of the Condor (more on this later). Then, the horror starts to fade into the background as the movie gets weirder and weirder, until you're watching something closer to Contact or The Abyss. And just when you've settled into that gear, the movie abruptly decides it wants to be some version of a thriller after all. But also kind of a melodrama.
Confused yet? Well, that's a big part of Kelly's brand, as are folding in science-fiction, religious undertones, and stopping mid-movie to drop exposition that implies more than it actually explains and leaves you more confused than you started. In Darko, it was a book on time-travel; here, it's a extraterrestrial HR manual on manipulating mind-controlled puppets.
Well, probably extraterrestrial - the movie heavily implies the force manipulating the experiment is an alien being (possibly even Martian), but I don't believe this was confirmed explicitly.
The main characters in all this are husband and wife, Arthur and Norma (played by James Marsden and Cameron Diaz) and Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), a disfigured man who delivers the box and money, then subsequently serves as an antagonist throughout the film, at least until we learn he's really just following his employers' instructions in carrying out a test to determine whether the human race is worth preserving or annihilating. Also, he genuinely seems sympathetic to the plight of the couple. Not sympathetic enough to save them, mind you, but he comes across more as a sort of cosmic lawyer serving some sort of neutral galactic tribunal than the literal devil's advocate prior versions imply him to be.
The second act of the film is Norma and Arthur trying to Scooby-Doo what's going on and/or save themselves after Norma hits the button for reasons that are... well... pretty sympathetic, honestly. The whole premise of this and the story it's based on hinges on the unspoken subtext that in a capitalist system, it's almost unimaginable that someone wouldn't press the button for a high enough payout, provided they weren't more worried about whatever fine print was being withheld. We all know the correct moral choice would be not to press the button, but we also know it's really just a reframed version of the same question we get wrong every time we buy food that's not sustainably sourced, purchase products made in exploited economies, or - hell - even start our cars or turn on the television when we don't need to. Our actions have hidden costs capitalism exacts from people elsewhere in the world. The consumption of resources through the very act of being alive places others at risk, and - depending on what we're willing to sacrifice, we have the power to shift that equation. But doing so impacts more than our comfort, as the same system that burdens us with this power also impacts our security, safety, and health of our bank accounts. And, more importantly, the security, safety, and health of our children.
That aspect of the equation is a bit more front and center here than in either Matheson's story or the episode of The Twilight Zone this is based on, but it's embedded in the subtext of both. The movie adds a child and medical issues to influence Norma's decision - she's a more sympathetic character here than in previous versions. Frustratingly, I still don't feel like this explores the moral quandary in the depth it deserves.
While the movie establishes that Norma's driven largely by sympathetic factors, it also makes it clear the couple have been living above their means. They're in a house they can't really afford, and Norma admits they spend too much. I could have done without those details, to be honest. It felt like the movie was moralizing in order to make the ending more palatable when the stark, mathematically horrific reality driving the world we inhabit should have remained the focus.
But of course remaining focused has never been Kelly's strong suit. Nor mine, I supposed - I was supposed to be writing about the plot. Where was I?
Once she's pressed the button, they get the money along with the same ominous addendum from the Twilight Zone episode: the box will be reprogrammed and given to someone else who they've never met. They correctly identify this as a threat, and Arthur tries unsuccessfully to return the money, despite being informed this is impossible.
We also learn a man across town shoots his wife and flees the scene at the moment the button's pressed. Police find the woman's body and also discover the couple's daughter locked in a bathroom. Eventually Arthur learns about this, as well. But by then things are progressively getting weirder and weirder. People around them keep spouting strange advice and cryptic messages before exhibiting nose bleeds and losing their memory. Arthur realizes both the man who killed his wife and Steward are connected to his employer, NASA, and further that Steward died and came back to life.
Also, he's taken to three pillars of water by a hoard of mind-controlled zombies and told he must choose one, with the added stipulation two will lead to eternal torment and the third to salvation. Fortunately, a kid he got in a fight with earlier gave him a hint that leads him to select the right one. Probably. Or not. We never really get much of an explanation as far as what that's all about.
Regardless, the water thing teleports him back to his bedroom. It also floods his house, but what do you expect from alien water teleportation pillars? Also, while he's teleporting he maybe gets a glimpse of the afterlife. He's not really sure. Everything from this part of the movie is bonkers: the messages Norma and Arthur receive sometimes feel contradictory, as if there are multiple intellects with conflicting objectives feeding them information through mind controlled puppets.
I should note this was the section of the movie I enjoyed the most, though I'm guessing that's not a popular opinion. I had fun with the bizarre, quirky shift in tone towards sci-fi. This is the section I referenced as feeling akin to Contact or The Abyss earlier, though a more accurate reference might be Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Box is set in 1976 and is stylized to resemble (at least superficially) a number of movies and subgenres specific to that decade.
But, as I said before, Kelly felt compelled to circle back to an ending more in keeping with the source material. So eventually whatever's behind all this kidnaps their son, removes his ability to see and hear, and locks him in the bathroom. Steward returns with a gun and a choice: either they can keep the money and live out the rest of their lives with their son disabled, or Arthur can kill Norma, at which point their son will regain the ability to see and hear.
Norma tells Arthur she can't live with the idea of their child going through life like that and demands he kill her. She takes some solace in the idea that Arthur might have seen the afterlife and therefore that there might be hope for her. He shoots her, is arrested, and - as promised - their kid is able to see and hear again. Also, the moment he pulls the trigger someone else hits the button. Of course.
So... I'm not thrilled with that ending, and I'm not just talking about the dual subtext surrounding ableism and domestic violence both being framed as heroic sacrifices. Setting aside those profoundly problematic choices, the decision to reverse what was already a tone and genre reversal left me disappointed.
Depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing, you might be more forgiving. But the wrinkles amounting to false hope wound up feeling like they were teasing other, more fulfilling narratives. I guess there weren't competing alien entities after all. I'm not sure how to square that with the various messages they were given, but I suppose there could be some sort of cypher that makes this work, though whether such a thing would make this any more satisfying is up to subjective opinion, anyway.
But we're here to talk Christmas, so let's address how the holidays are being used. Well, like most everything else in the movie, the answer is bizarrely. The film is definitely set around Christmas, beginning about a week beforehand and playing out over the next several days. There are some decorations, multiple parties (though most seem focused on an upcoming wedding), and dialogue makes a handful of half-hearted comparisons between the titular box and Christmas presents, but on the whole none of it's anywhere near as pointed or as sustained as you'd imagine. The movie makes a point of establishing and reinforcing the fact it's set at Christmas, but it has very little interest leveraging that tonally or playing with it. There's really not much of an attempt to contrast the setting with the events. Likewise, the movie doesn't really play up connections between the parents' concern for their son and the whole baby Jesus thing. It does wedge in some speculation on the afterlife, along with semi-religious hope, though - again - if these were intended to tie into the holidays, the connecting tissue never really materializes.
So, why Christmas? I've got a few thoughts, starting with one of the movies this reminds me of, Three Days of the Condor, a thriller spy film significant for our purposes because it's similarly set at Christmas. It's possible the setting of this adaptation was picked as a nod to that film. Or maybe it was just an attempt to ironically play off the "gift" aspect (though, again, the movie was only periodically interested in doing so).
I should note neither the original story nor the Twilight Zone adaptation share the holiday setting, though the latter does have one tenuous connection. There's a moment in the episode when Norma is shown watching television, and what's on is A Wonderful Life. It's an early scene without any holiday elements and isn't particularly recognizable. My guess is the clip was used because the movie was considered public domain in the 1980s, though it could also have been an inside joke about Steward's name being one letter off from Stewart. Perhaps Kelly was inspired to set his movie at Christmas by this reference.
Granted, it's also possible he just wanted to do a Christmas movie to compliment Donnie Darko's Halloween setting the way The Box's '70s compliments Darko's '80s. Regardless, it makes for an interesting case where the holidays appear without any obvious reference or purpose (or at least not one that stood out to me).
It's also worth noting that holiday movies weren't common in the decade this was set. Interestingly, we seem to be getting some now: both The Holdovers and The Sacrifice Game take place in the early '70s and similarly reference the decade stylistically. If nothing else, The Box is interesting as a forerunner of these.
But I don't think that's the only thing interesting about The Box. Christmas science-fiction crossovers are rare and often overlooked when lists of holiday movies are compiled. While I'm not entirely clear on why this is set at Christmas, that doesn't change the fact it is, which - for my money at least - solidifies this as a Christmas movie. That alone made this worth seeing for me.
I also really had fun following the twists, and - until the anticlimactic ending - was enjoying the ride. Perhaps it's the movie's title, but Kelly's strengths and weaknesses remind me of J.J. Abram's, particularly in reference to his infamous "mystery box" fixation. Both are really good at setting up fascinating cinematic worlds so long as they don't have to actually deliver any kind of payoff.
Beyond that, the cast here includes some great actors, even if Kelly has some of them awkwardly doing inconsistent Virginian accents. In addition to the three stars, this also features a pre-Britta Gillian Jacobs as their kid's mind-controlled babysitter - seeing her pop up here was a fun surprise.
This is certainly a movie where the flaws are more pronounced than its strengths, but I can't deny I found sequences charming. If this had ended on a better note, this would be a very different review. As it is, I still think this is better than it's given credit for... just not by a wide enough margin to warrant more than a lukewarm recommendation.
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