Original Post
The title made you look, didn't it? Well, that was the idea (or maybe it wasn't - I'm not sure), because that's precisely what tickled my fancy when I first heard of it (2009). I had been wary of the film ever since I took a look at some of the reviews on IMDb; moreover, a few of my friends who had seen the film, had made me even more wary by assuring me that the movie is - for better or for worse - well worth its more than mediocre 5.8 mark as indicated by popular vote. And then I watched the film.
Is it just me or are people nowadays too daft to get moral conundrums guised as sci-fi ? Or am I strangely one of the few people alive who is old enough to actually remember when adding emotional ambiguity and that sensation of the chill you get when you feel like someone's just walked over your grave gives you when you finish watching a film and find yourself going "yes, yes, that's fine... buuuuuuut". And then you come up with a ton of questions which, more often than not, boil down to analyzing yourself rather than focusing on the (often necessitated) shortcomings of the story itself? Am I one of the few remaining of the solid old school sci-fi clan who likes stories like Ray Bradbury's The Veldt or Jack McDevitt's Henry James, This One's For You or, heck, even Kafka's Metamorphosis?
Has subtlety become scary or have people such as myself lost our edge and become too simple for today's expectations? I mean - it can't be that bad, can it? After all it's not that big of a step from being 29 to liking Justin Bieber. Why is it, apparently, not the same in reverse? On second thought. Bieber gave me herpes simply by looking at a picture of him once.
Going back to the film itself, The Box deliveres in so many respects, despite falling short in sheer filmmaking craft, that I can't even tell where to start addressing such a measly grade. I think a good starting point would be to dissect the potential target audience and run the traditional "IMDb's rating system is grossly biased" protocol over it, quoting apparent cinematic feats such as the The Lord Of The Rings (2001) films or even The Shawshank Redemption (1994) as the norm (even though I'm quite literally having serious trouble placing the latter two even remotely in the same ballpark while considering Shawshank a grossly overrated movie - which is to say that I don't even know where to start placing the LOTR films; far side of the Moon, maybe?). Fair enough, The Box is no Contact (1997). But it does remind me of a budget-enabled Primer (2004), Cube (1997) or even this thing (I'm not implying The Box is 100 minutes too long - it's not; it's no more than 15-20 minutes too long and actually makes good use of its slow Stepford Wives'y (1975) pacing).
I've had a whopping hour or two to let the juices settle after finishing watching the film, but I can tell right now at first glace I picked up at least three major moral levels, each of which had a pretty nicely honed proper conclusion (succumbing to necessity/temptation; the implication that if more than half of the people in the world open the box, humanity will have failed the test (I especially loved this one); and a rather catchy catch-22). That's three more (sometimes four more) than most films have when watched with more pot in your system than Heidegger ever had. There was some weaker and less important stuff as well, as well as some completely unnecessary stuff. But it was never outright boring (the slow pace did tend to drag in the middle, though - especially during the party scenes). It was also incomparably better than than the recent betwetter Skyline (2010) and, I would argue, had more moral complexity and depth than the very much underrated Monsters (2010). Nevertheless, the 5.8 rating leaves me to either question the sanity of most everyone around me or that of myself (and as much as I would enjoy to question everyone else's sanity, I will refrain from doing that (for now)).
Did you see the film? Did you like it? Why didn't you?
Is it just me or are people nowadays too daft to get moral conundrums guised as sci-fi ? Or am I strangely one of the few people alive who is old enough to actually remember when adding emotional ambiguity and that sensation of the chill you get when you feel like someone's just walked over your grave gives you when you finish watching a film and find yourself going "yes, yes, that's fine... buuuuuuut". And then you come up with a ton of questions which, more often than not, boil down to analyzing yourself rather than focusing on the (often necessitated) shortcomings of the story itself? Am I one of the few remaining of the solid old school sci-fi clan who likes stories like Ray Bradbury's The Veldt or Jack McDevitt's Henry James, This One's For You or, heck, even Kafka's Metamorphosis?
Has subtlety become scary or have people such as myself lost our edge and become too simple for today's expectations? I mean - it can't be that bad, can it? After all it's not that big of a step from being 29 to liking Justin Bieber. Why is it, apparently, not the same in reverse? On second thought. Bieber gave me herpes simply by looking at a picture of him once.
Going back to the film itself, The Box deliveres in so many respects, despite falling short in sheer filmmaking craft, that I can't even tell where to start addressing such a measly grade. I think a good starting point would be to dissect the potential target audience and run the traditional "IMDb's rating system is grossly biased" protocol over it, quoting apparent cinematic feats such as the The Lord Of The Rings (2001) films or even The Shawshank Redemption (1994) as the norm (even though I'm quite literally having serious trouble placing the latter two even remotely in the same ballpark while considering Shawshank a grossly overrated movie - which is to say that I don't even know where to start placing the LOTR films; far side of the Moon, maybe?). Fair enough, The Box is no Contact (1997). But it does remind me of a budget-enabled Primer (2004), Cube (1997) or even this thing (I'm not implying The Box is 100 minutes too long - it's not; it's no more than 15-20 minutes too long and actually makes good use of its slow Stepford Wives'y (1975) pacing).
I've had a whopping hour or two to let the juices settle after finishing watching the film, but I can tell right now at first glace I picked up at least three major moral levels, each of which had a pretty nicely honed proper conclusion (succumbing to necessity/temptation; the implication that if more than half of the people in the world open the box, humanity will have failed the test (I especially loved this one); and a rather catchy catch-22). That's three more (sometimes four more) than most films have when watched with more pot in your system than Heidegger ever had. There was some weaker and less important stuff as well, as well as some completely unnecessary stuff. But it was never outright boring (the slow pace did tend to drag in the middle, though - especially during the party scenes). It was also incomparably better than than the recent betwetter Skyline (2010) and, I would argue, had more moral complexity and depth than the very much underrated Monsters (2010). Nevertheless, the 5.8 rating leaves me to either question the sanity of most everyone around me or that of myself (and as much as I would enjoy to question everyone else's sanity, I will refrain from doing that (for now)).
Did you see the film? Did you like it? Why didn't you?
