| The Box (2009) |  | Director: Richard Kelly
Actors: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn, Holmes Osborne
Studio: Warner Bros.
Category: Movie
This item is no longer available
Rating:  113 reviews
Sales Rank: 9,073
Genre: Thrillers
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 116 Minutes
ASIN: B0032SQCQI
Theatrical Release Date: October 30, 2009
Release Date: February 23, 2010
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| Synopsis:
What if someone gave you a box containing a button that, if pushed, would bring you a million dollars...but simultaneously take the life of someone you don't know? Would you do it? And what would be the consequences? The year is 1976. Norma Lewis is a teacher at a private high school and her husband, Arthur, is an engineer working at NASA. They are, by all accounts, an average couple living a normal life in the suburbs with their young son...until a mysterious man with a horribly disfigured face appears on their doorstep and presents Norma with a life-altering proposition: the box. With only 24 hours to make their choice, Norma and Arthur face an impossible moral dilemma. What they don't realize is that no matter what they decide, terrifying consequences will have already been set in motion. They soon discover that the ramifications of this decision are beyond their control and extend far beyond their own fortune and fate. |
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 113
 Think Inside the Box August 19, 2010
Elliott (L.A.)
"EHT XOB." If you can't figure out what the two encoded words inside this quote are and feel that they may come from some, say, extraterrestrial tongue, you may find this film to be quite intriguing. Of course, I know what the words are because I encoded them myself! It seems to me that this film employs the same kind of logic contained in the preceding sentences.
I feel this production should come with a disclaimer at the beginning: Contains ideas and images meaningful only to the filmmaker. A couple, portrayed by James Marsden and Cameron Diaz, live in a comfortable home in Richmond. He's involved in research at NASA, and she's a teacher. So far, so good. But it quickly goes bonkers. A box is left on their front doorstep while they are sleeping. Inside the box is another box, which has a large button on top. Soon, a weird guy (wearing a rather dapper hat) shows up and tells the couple that if either pushes the button, they will get a million dollars. (This was back in the early seventies when you could buy something with a million.) Of course, there's a catch. . .
Well, all this occurs in the first few moments, so I haven't spoiled anything. The film does its own spoiling. There are all kinds of bloody noses, zombies in the library, snow that falls without touching anything, giant wind tunnel fans, Vikings on Mars, and a motel swimming pool that doubles as a portal to. . .
I looked up writer/director/producer Richard Kelly in Wikipedia. I watched the film again. All of this did help me to follow and understand the story a lot better. But I still cannot recommend this tangled hodgepodge to anyone. The brightest element was Cameron Diaz's sterling performance.
 well... it sort of works August 8, 2010
B. E Jackson (Pennsylvania)
I think I'm completely confused. Something doesn't seem quite right with the Box. The storyline in the beginning is about an old man who drops off a mysterious box in front of a families house real early in the morning.
Later on, the old man returns and explains to the couple (the wife specifically) what exactly will happens when she presses this button connected to the box. Someone will then die. It will be someone the wife doesn't know, but someone WILL in fact die. However, the family will then receive 1 million bucks just for simply pressing the button.
It brings up an interesting question- would *you* push that button knowing how much money you'd receive, and considering how bad the economy is right now? You could use it!
So the next 30 minutes is about the wife and husband asking each other whether they should press the button or not. A good moment of detail is when the husband asks his wife if she believes she will feel any remorse for someone being killed that they don't even know.
The wife apparently has no sympathy whatsoever and doesn't care either way- she just wants the money because of all the problems the family is going through at the current time.
Anyway, what completely confuses me is just WHAT the heck happened? The storyline seemed to point to a movie being about a crazy murderer on the loose and threatening random people around town... but then -to my total shock- the Box actually turns into a sci-fi???
Yup, that old man with a huge gash on the side of his face is actually someone who got strike by lightning, was killed, came back from the dead and turned into an alien. I guess. He has these amazing abilities that nobody else on the planet has, and considering so much of the storyline focus was about the planet Mars, I assume he was some kind of alien.
He sure loved giving people nosebleeds. It seemed like everyone had a nosebleed at some point.
Oh well, the point is- the storyline shows absolutely NO signs of turning into a weird sci-fi flick, but that's exactly what the second half is about. Oh sure, before the second half everyone was walking around acting a bit quiet and strange, but there's plenty of non-alien reasons for that!
I feel disappointed. However, the fact that the storyline actually has some rather terrifying moments and tells a fairly easy to understand story makes me reconsider my initial reaction of giving it 3 stars. It's actually a good movie, but it's not at ALL what I expected. Keep that in mind.
Later on the storyline gets even better when the old man returns and put the wife and husband in *another* tricky situation with another life-changing decision. What will they do? How will they answer the question? You'll have to watch it to find out.
I don't think I quite got the ending, but whatever. We can't expect perfecton *all* the time!
One of the worst Sci-Fi movies ever August 8, 2010
TomP
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I rarely write movie reviews, but having just finished watching this one I felt compelled to do so. The central theme was basically stolen from a Star Trek Next Generation episode that featured a super advanced being named "Q", who decided to test the crew. Based on the test results, Q was to decide if the entire human species was to survive. Well, the idea is the same here, but the execution is simply horrible. The whole plot makes little sense, and the only part of the movie that gets the viewer's attention is the first 10 minutes. Afterwards the plot degenerates into a series of completely implausible, boring, and repetitive events. I hope that if one day we are to be "evaluated" by some whimsical supreme being, that he does not get a hold of a copy of "The Box". If he does, it will surely result in the annihilation of our species!
 You like Richard Kelly or you don't. August 8, 2010
Nicolas Garceau (Canada, Montreal)
I watched Donnie Darko many years ago and I loved it. When Southland Tales came out I saw it, thought it was very well done but the story was a bit too much. This movie, The Box, has the same kind of atsmosphere and dark sci-fi surreal story as those 2 movies and the story is thought provoking. I loved it. I don,t get the bad reviews at all. If you liked Richard Kelly's previous movies, surely you will like this one too. Also recommended for fans of David Lynch.
Almost Like Day the Earth Stood Still-Except this was crap August 1, 2010
Boz (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Somehow Aliens are judging as as too wether o not we will push a button and get million dollars while somebody somwhere dies which makes us look bad and may for Frank Langellas Aliens to put an end to us. Juts like Klaatus warning that if humans dont stop their wars. the the rest of the planetery systmes may stop earth before it does harm outside its immediet environs.
I really had to drone thru this one. Their was some attempt at philosophy and greed and morality but it got lost in a inane script.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 113
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