The Box: The gulp of the pulp

Richard Kelly, the creator of a memorable cult masterpiece “Donnie Darko”, gives you the idea of a life-box. Your house, your car, your body, your coffin – closed, compact, solid but transient – compressing, squeezing, tightening, and finally, altering or even crushing your spirit and soul. You are up to anything to widen, to enhance, to live a better box than other people, but the flame of thought or conscience or existence smouldering in the pit of your skull just surprisingly burns out and there is only the box and no contents inside.

“The Box” is a novel-based picture which pays homage to the absurd-packed pulp fiction and sci-fi B movies. Supported by the existentialist psychological play written by Jean-Paul Sartre, namely, “No Exit”, it smuggles a very up-to-date but the ‘70s. settled theory which punches you straight in the stomach in order to pinch and burn and not to be forgotten somewhere in between the nonsense-and-gravity fizzing shake and the mystic New Age babble. Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) lead a happy life in modesty together with their son, Walter. But the financial opportunity taking the shape of a strange red button-topped device which literally erects in front of their door makes them concentrate their efforts on improving “the box” rather than keeping to the values they elaborated. The idea is simple and most intriguing: push the button and you’ll get one million dollars, push the button and somebody you don’t know will die. The choice is yours, can your conscience take it?

The brilliant concept, however, becomes too literal and pretentious to accept the quirky story as one shocking entity. Kelly aims at justifying and explaining both the mysterious device and wonderfully creepy Arlington Steward played delightfully by Frank Langella, who presents the disturbing proposal to the Lewis couple. The background gets the audience into the area of some unbelievable sci-fi debris which contorts the astounding idea of analyzing destructive human behaviour and nature and overtakes the main concept of the picture. Finally, artistic ambitions get diluted in the solution of the genres multiplication. Intriguing and courageous cinematic experiment lacking congruency and overcomplicated. Too bad – sometimes simplicity is the key.