RottenTomatoes.com
Log In | Register | What is RT?
Found a Bug? Squash It! Report Bugs Here
  • Home
  • Movies
  • DVD
  • Celebrities
  • News
  • Critics
  • Trailers & Pictures
  • CommunityBeta
  • Box Office
  • | In Theaters
  • | Opening
  • | Upcoming
  • | Best Of
  • | Certified Fresh
RT Search Powered by Google
help icon Enhanced RT
searches on Google
Click here to turn on enhanced search results from RT on your Google searches.
 
Movies / Upcoming / The Box
The Box

Rate this Movie Help Icon

  • Write a Review
  • Read Reviews
  • Add to List
  • Buy Poster External Icon
Bookmark and Share

The Box (2009)

  • T-Meter Critics
  • Top Critics
  • RT Community
  • My Critics
  • My Friends
47 %
Tomatometer
Template ImageTemplate Image

How does the Tomatometer work Help Icon

Reviews Counted:90

Fresh:42

Rotten:48

Average Rating:5.3/10

Consensus: Imaginative but often preposterous, The Box features some thrills but largely feels too piecemeal.

Genre: Horror/Suspense

US Box Office: $14,503,106

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... 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. --© Warner Bros [More]

Starring: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn

Starring: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn, Holmes Osborne

Director: Richard Kelly

Director: Richard Kelly
Screenwriter: Richard Kelly
Producer: Sean McKittrick, Richard Kelly, Dan Lin
Composer: Win Butler, Regine Chassagne, Owen Pallett
Studio: Warner Bros.

[See More Credits]

  • Trailers
  • Pictures
  • Trailer
    >
    Are You Going to Make the Offer to Someone Else?
    >
    Who Pushed the Button?
    >
    We Don't Want Anyone to Get Hurt
    >
  • What Are We Going to Do?
    >
    Trailer
    >
    Push the Button
    >
1 - 4 of 7

See More Movie Trailers & Pictures

Reviews for The Box

  • T-Meter Critics
  • Top Critics
  • RT Community
  • My Critics
  • My Friends
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
Text View | 1 2 3 4 5 >> >|
Arrange By:Fresh | Rotten | Comments | Name | Source | Date
 
 

Kelly's most accessible ambiguous odyssey to date, The Box dares you to open it up again and again.

Full Review Source: Sunday Mail (Australia) | comment Comment
11/01/09
Ben McEachen
Ben McEachen
Sunday Mail (Australia)
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Regrettably, and despite a lot of effects -- including those watery tentacles he seems so fond of -- Kelly delivers a Big Reveal that is, frankly, boring.

Full Review Source: The Age (Australia) | comment Comment
10/28/09
Jim Schembri
Jim Schembri
The Age (Australia)
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The movie gives the impression of being pasted together from many different parts rather than presented as a cohesive whole.

Full Review Source: Courier Mail (Australia) | comment Comment
10/28/09
Des Partridge
Des Partridge
Courier Mail (Australia)
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The interesting thing about Richard Kelly's films is that in none of them do you know exactly what's happening, and it does not really matter, because there is such a wealth of imagination there. I found it very impressive.

Full Review Source: At the Movies (Australia) | comment Comment
10/28/09
David Stratton
David Stratton
At the Movies (Australia)
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Like Donnie Darko, The Box's eerily effective atmosphere of paranoid conspiracy would not hold up to too much scrutiny. Fans of that twisted sci-fi conundrum will need no further encouragement to see this follow-up in the same vein.

Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph (Australia) | comment Comment
10/28/09
Vicky Roach
Vicky Roach
Daily Telegraph (Australia)
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Certain parts of it are maddeningly inspired. The sum of all its parts will just make you mad.

Full Review Source: Herald Sun (Australia) | comment Comment
10/28/09
Leigh Paatsch
Leigh Paatsch
Herald Sun (Australia)
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Although an improvement on Southland Tales, Richard 'Donnie Darko' Kelly's cryptic moody thriller has a far-fetched premise that is not helped by a script filled with holes.

Full Review Source: FILMINK (Australia) | comment Comment
10/27/09
Julian Shaw
Julian Shaw
FILMINK (Australia)
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

A moody antidote to the freakshow of Southland Tales, The Box feels like Richard Kelly’s spiritual sequel to Donnie Darko -- foreboding and off-kilter, it’s a late-night riff on ’70s sci-fi that confirms the director as an original.

Full Review Source: Empire Magazine Australasia | comment Comment
10/27/09
Luke Goodsell
Luke Goodsell
Empire Magazine Australasia
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

It may fall short of Donnie Darko's clever storytelling, but for his third feature film, Kelly plays confidently with suspense and lays down the right hooks at the right time to keep you drawn into his creepy world.

Full Review Source: IGN Movies AU | comment 6 Comments
10/21/09
Patrick Kolan
Patrick Kolan
IGN Movies AU
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

all at once an engrossing genre piece, an exceptional exercise in expansive adaptation, and a complex moral allegory, so that this is a Box that requires a lot of unpacking - which of course makes it the gift that keeps on giving...

Full Review Source: Eye for Film | comment Comment
11/23/09
Anton Bitel
Anton Bitel
Eye for Film

Outlandish embellishments serve as annoying distractions to a perfectly good premise in this disappointing thriller.

Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews | comment Comment
11/18/09
Betty Jo Tucker
Betty Jo Tucker
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

A box full of boredom.

Full Review Source: Entertainment Spectrum | comment Comment
11/18/09
Jolene Mendez
Jolene Mendez
Entertainment Spectrum

Kelly, king of dumbed-down nihilism, takes a short Twilight Zone TV episode, “Button, Button,” and extends it unendurably...

Full Review Source: New York Press | comment Comment
11/18/09
Armond White
Armond White
New York Press

The choice is yours, but I suggest you push that button for your ticket and see The Box in theaters.

Full Review Source: Horror.com | comment Comment
11/17/09
Staci Layne Wilson
Staci Layne Wilson
Horror.com

A cool, philosophical mindfreak.

Full Review Source: Aisle Seat | comment Comment
11/16/09
Mike McGranaghan
Mike McGranaghan
Aisle Seat

This hokum might have been entertaining if Kelly could have somehow made this "Twilight Zone" material more credible.

Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews | comment Comment
11/16/09
Dennis Schwartz
Dennis Schwartz
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

The first half is a brilliantly realized exercise in sustained tension; the suspense fades as the story becomes increasingly bizarre...

Full Review Source: Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) | comment Comment
11/13/09
John Beifuss
John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

A Richard Matheson story is a good place to start, but boy did this screenplay lose direction. By the third act, a good story becomes totally laughable, including nose-bleeding zombies. Paul Chambers, CNN.

Full Review Source: CNNRadio | comment Comment
11/13/09
Paul Chambers
Paul Chambers
CNNRadio

One of those thrillers that, looking back on it, has some plot ribbons with frayed, fuzzy ends. Just not quite sharp-edged enough to open doors to images and fears in your head you never knew were there, but now want desperately to lock up.

Full Review Source: Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada) | comment Comment
11/13/09
Brian Gibson
Brian Gibson
Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)

Both its imagination and its ambition sprint far beyond anything offered in the creatively neutered likes of Disney's A Christmas Carol or Law Abiding Citizen.

Full Review Source: Creative Loafing | comment Comment
11/13/09
Matt Brunson
Matt Brunson
Creative Loafing
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
Text View | 1 2 3 4 5 >> >|
all

Latest News for The Box

November 05, 2009: Critics Consensus: A Christmas Carol Dazzles But Disappoints
This week at the movies, we've got some modern-day Dickens (Disney's A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman); a button-pushing thriller (The Box, starring... More...

November 03, 2009: Richard Kelly Talks The Box Opens in new window
It's been a long and somewhat bumpy ride getting "The Box" to theaters, but director Richard Kelly is finally on the verge of releasing his latest film. He talks about the... More...

October 29, 2009: Richard Kelly chats about The Box
Richard Kelly's no stranger to the mysterious whims of fate. His first feature, Donnie Darko, flopped upon initial release, only to live on as one of the decade's most beloved... More...

September 28, 2009: New: Brand New Movie Trailer/Poster Opens in new window
More...

See All

More Movies

Coming Soon in Australia
Tomatometer Percentage Movie Date

70% 70% Where the Wild Things Are 03/12
83% 83% Paranormal Activity 03/12
89% 89% Zombieland 03/12
76% 76% The Informant! 03/12
— The Strength of Water 03/12

What’s Hot On RT

Shock! Horror?

Shock! Horror?

Lars von Trier talks Antichrist

Zombieland

Zombieland

Director Ruben Fleischer's favourites

New Avatar action

New Avatar action

Watch an exclusive chase clip from the film

Kids' Book Films

Kids' Book Films

We fly through 10 of the best

Other News

  • Top Stories
  • Popular
  • Interviews
 
 

Comments

 
 
Top Stories
Headlines Comments
  
  • First Look (Sort Of) at New Nightmare's Freddy Source: ShockTillYouDrop.com
14
  • First Look at Shrek Forever After Source: USA Today
36
  • Woody Harrelson Will Battle Zombies in 3-D Source: Moviehole
16
  • Natalie Portman Says Kat Denning Is in Thor Source: MTV
34
  • Disney Restructuring Has Broad Implications Source: Los Angeles Times
10
  • Joel Silver Talks Ninja Assassin, Sgt. Rock, Lobo, and More Source: Collider.com
1
  • Weekly Ketchup: Idris Elba cast in Thor, more Spider-Man 4 rumors
116
  • Idris Elba Joins Thor Source: Hollywood Reporter
112
  • Jackass 3D Coming in 2010? Source: Collider.com
32
  • 6 Reasons 'Twilight' Is Doomed Source: The Wrap
64
Popular
Headlines Comments
  
  • Box Office Guru Wrapup: New Moon Shatters Records
176
  • Critics Consensus: New Moon Wanes
130
  • Total Recall: John Travolta's Best Movies
76
  • Total Recall: Star-Crossed Lovers
75
  • Weekly Ketchup: Idris Elba cast in Thor, more Spider-Man 4 rumors
58
  • Critics Consensus: Flee From Ninja Assassin
37
  • Friday Harvest: New Moon, Avatar, and more!
32
  • Five Favorite Films With Zombieland Director Ruben Fleischer
17
  • "I Don't Hate Women": Lars von Trier on Antichrist
13
  • Total Recall: Children's Book Adaptations
3
Interviews
Headlines Comments
  
  • "I Don't Hate Women": Lars von Trier on Antichrist
13
  • Eric Bana talks Love the Beast - RT Interview
9
  • Fight Club Sound Designer Reflects on Film's 10th Anniversary
19
  • James Schamus talks Taking Woodstock - RT Interview
6
  • RT on DVD: Wassup, Bruno
3
  • Scott Hicks Talks The Boys Are Back
0
  • John Hurt Talks Harry Potter, Quentin Crisp and Alien - The RT Interview
15
  • Richard Kelly chats about The Box
2
  • Terry Gilliam Talks Doctor Parnassus
20
  • Wes Anderson Talks Fantastic Mr. Fox - RT Interview
8
 
 

Sponsored Links

Around The Network

  • The Box at Rotten Tomatoes
  • The Box at IGN

Fresh Links

Featured
Dressing Wonderland
Dressing Wonderland External Link

Tim Burton's costume designer talks to Movieline about her long collaboration with the filmmaker and Johnny Depp.

Wes Anderson on Fox
Wes Anderson on Fox External Link

The director talks about puppetry perfection and his film, Fantastic Mr. Fox

Win Glee DVDs
Win Glee DVDs External Link

We've got 20 copies of the hit TV series' Pilot Episode to giveaway.

Win tickets to Cold Souls
Win tickets to Cold Souls External Link

Double passes up for grabs to the new comedy starring Paul Giamatti.

Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Twitter
Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Twitter External Link

Get all the latest movie updates, reviews, interviews and features here.

Competitions
Win Star Wars prizes
Win Star Wars prizes External Link

Enough Prequel, Original Trilogy and Family Guy DVDs to fill a space cruiser

Win the entire 007 collection
Win the entire 007 collection External Link

Everything from Dr. No to Quantum of Solace could be yours.

Win Fight Club Special Editions and more
Win Fight Club Special Editions and more External Link

We're giving away the 10th Anniversary Blu-ray, plus Braveheart and the Rocky collection

 
 
About| Site Map| Help| RT To Go| Contact Us| Critics Submission| Linking to RT| Licensing| Movie List| Celebs List| Newsletter
IGN Logo

IGN.com | GameSpy | Comrade | Arena | FilePlanet | GameSpy Technology
TeamXbox | Planets | Vaults | VE3D | CheatsCodesGuides | GameStats | GamerMetrics
AskMen.com | Rotten Tomatoes | Direct2Drive | Green Pixels


By continuing past this page, and by the continued use of this site, you agree to be bound by and abide by the User Agreement.
Copyright 1998-2009, IGN Entertainment, Inc. About IGN | Support | Advertise | Privacy Policy | User Agreement | Subscribe to RT's XML feed! IGN RSS Feeds
IGN's enterprise databases running Oracle, SQL and MySQL are professionally monitored and managed by Pythian Remote DBA
Certain product data ©1995-present Muze, Inc. For personal use only. All rights reserved.