The Box (2009)

What to say about this one? I am in the habit of writing these reviews, whenever possible, immediately after seeing the film in question, but some films do require more time to digest. Be that as it may this encapsulation, like many I write, constitutes a summation of basic first impressions. The Box is a film written and directed by Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly, and based on a television episode from the 1980's version of The Twilight Zone, which in turn was based on the short story Button, Button by the metaphysical since fiction writer Richard Matheson. The basic story is about a married couple given a box with a button on it and informed that if they press said button they will get a million dollars, but that somebody somewhere on the face of the planet (who they do not know) will die as a result. As a moral conundrum I think this should be a simple one to solve, don't push the button, but Kelly takes what on the surface would seem a simple (if odd) scenario and complicates it, adding a lot of extra layers to the proceedings and treating us to a vaguely moody, but mostly impressively odd outing.

This film has me thinking about Kelly's (albeit limited) directorial work as a whole and got me asking if the man has a unique style, is just repeating himself, or both? Let me get this straight I liked this film, and while I'm not entirely sure where Kelly is trying to take us with his work, I think that's part of the reason I like it. It seems in all of his films, to varying degrees of success, Kelly is trying to tell us something, I think its largely the same something, but I'm not entirely sure what that is. He leaves a general sense, or impression, you get the gist and most of the pieces of the puzzle but you never get the whole thing, and I'm sure that's what he intends. This worked quite well in Donnie Darko, considerably less well in Southland Tales, and back to near Darko levels of ambiguity and quality in this film. The term 'metaphysical nostalgia' is what I've been able to come up with for his style so far, and it feels firmly rooted in Joseph Campbell and Rod Sterling. I leave impressed, thinking, and satisfied, though from what I've read on the net (and that's just the critics, the user reviews on netflix are even worse) that sounds like a minority opinion.