SYNOPSIS:
Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child,
receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and
irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger, delivers
the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner
$1 million with the press of a button. But, pressing this
button will simultaneously cause the death of another human
being somewhere in the world; someone they don't know. With
just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and
Arthur find themselves in the cross-hairs of a startling moral
dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Certain stories are best kept short.
That the essence of certain stories and to drag it any further would lessen the impact that the story is meant for. The Box is one of those stories that are meant to be short.
Originated from a short story "Button, Button" by Richard Matheson and later on adapted into a Twilight Zone episode, this tale of tussle with morality was set on the premise that what if a married couple had received a box with a button on it and by pressing it, they would receive a big sum of money (due to inflation, it's safer to use big as any figure listed now would look small in years to come). The catch here would be that it would cause the death of someone that they don't know.
Although both plots were resolved differently, they were memorable in their respective rights. The story is an effective one as it does not try to explain the mystery behind the box or the intention behind the stranger that gave the box to the couple. It drives the audience to focus on the morality issues instead and the sudden unexpected but memorable revelation.
Simple, short and sweet.
Various short stories had been expanded for a full length movie and found respective success in the manner that the stories were adapted (ref: Shawshank Redemption and Where the Wild Things Are). Director Richard Kelly (who directed the cult favorite film Donnie Darko) chose to expand "Button, Button" by explaining the mysteries behind the box and penalties for pressing the button. To do that, a conspiracy tale that involved government sector, aliens and even supernatural elements were mixed into the short story to bring more insights to characters and other weirdness. It gave the director a chance to dable on his favorite subjects such as spirituality and existentialism in a dark ominous setting. Not forgetting his puzzling narratives that were also present in Donnie Darko and Southland Tales.
To be fair, the additional tale that Richard Kelly brought this retelling for "Button, Button" could have been a fairly interesting one in it's own rights. To a degree, it was like the recent The Day the Earth Stood Still in preaching about the problematic issues with humanity and the choices we made.
However the problem with the extension would be that while it might satisfy some of Richard Kelly's die hard fans, it felt like two stories were fighting for the spotlight and ended up shadowing the brilliance in each respective parts. The "Button, Button" endings had a swift and strong punishment for the guilty while The Box chose to punish the innocent folks that happened to be related to the guilty one, leaving a rather unsatisfactory resolution to the matter at hand. Ironically The Box made references to the endings in both versions of "Button, Button" but the delivery were so weak that it caused little impact and for those uninitiated, the significant of those two references could bear not much bearings at all.
There were also not enough screen time to fully develop the additional alien government conspiracy tale. To cover that shortcoming, I suspect that Richard Kelly resolved to his old cryptic style of story telling. The gamble would be to make those fans who love to maul over the unexplained and therefore creating a buzz like how Donnie Darko did with it's fandom.
But evidently, The Box would likely go down as another proof that some short story should remain short and the unexplained should remain unexplained.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The Box was set in the 1976 and is filled with rich visual of the past. It also contain moments of visual effects and audio effects to drum out the foreboding atmosphere. This dvd disc was adequate in representing those audio and visual on a normal TV.
MOVIE RATING:
 
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
Posted on 20 March 2010
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