Kelly's most accessible ambiguous odyssey to date, The Box dares you to open it up again and again.
Comment
11/01/09
The Box (2009)
44
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:130
Fresh:57
Rotten:73
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: Imaginative but often preposterous, The Box features some thrills but largely feels too piecemeal.
Runtime: 1 hr 56 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
US Box Office: $14,961,931
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... [More]
Starring: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn
Director: Richard Kelly
Reviews for The Box
Top CriticRegrettably, and despite a lot of effects -- including those watery tentacles he seems so fond of -- Kelly delivers a Big Reveal that is, frankly, boring.
10/28/09
Top CriticThe movie gives the impression of being pasted together from many different parts rather than presented as a cohesive whole.
10/28/09
Top CriticThe 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.
10/28/09
Top CriticLike 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.
10/28/09
Top CriticCertain parts of it are maddeningly inspired. The sum of all its parts will just make you mad.
10/28/09
Top CriticAlthough 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.
10/27/09
Top CriticA 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.
10/27/09
Top CriticIt 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.
10/21/09
Top CriticKelly stretches a perfectly good 22-minute television episode out to two hours with an insane barrage of red herrings and metaphysical sci-fi mumbo-jumbo
03/19/10
It is a film that wants to be profound but it ends up feeling more like a lesser episode of The X Files.
03/18/10
Top Critic[Director Kelly] ventures boldly into the ludicrous, and comes out the other side with an even more sinister conclusion.
03/12/10
All moral conflicts and creepy allusions are lost in a barrage of ridiculous plot devices, and a story that makes absolutely no sense...
02/25/10
For those willing to follow Kelly down all the rabbit holes his warped imagination contrives, there are small treasures to be found here and there.
02/15/10
...promises more than it delivers, ultimately providing a muddled narrative that does nothing to convince us of its moral positions.
02/13/10
What is supposed to suggest a state of discomfort and unease feels more disjointed and frustrating than anything, and what's meant to be menacing soon turns laughable.
12/17/09
The acting is stiff, the special effects look cheap and the dialogue is unintentionally funny.
12/11/09
For the first half-hour the movie is engagingly mystifying in a David Lynch vein. Subsequently it modulates into a piece of didactic transcendental science-fiction in the manner of The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters.
12/11/09
The Box is by no means as indigestible as Southland Tales, and there's as much to relish as there is to groan at.
12/11/09
The most disturbing thing here is the yellow, oval-patterned 1970s wallpaper
12/08/09
Latest News for The Box
February 25, 2010:
Win Copies of Richard Kelly's The Box
We're giving away DVD copies of 'The Box', the latest sci-fi thriller from 'Donnie Darko' director Richard Kelly, More...
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 
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...
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