The Box review and a meditation on modern genre thillers

I liked The Box, the newly released film from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, quite a bit. For those who haven't heard of the movie, it's about a married couple (James Marsden and Cameron Diaz) who are given a box with a button by a mysterious man (Frank Langella) who offers them a million dollars in cash if they press it, but tells them that someone they do not know will die if they do. The Box has a number of commendable qualities: it's attractively shot and layers on the period details (the film is set in 1976) rather than hitting the viewer over the head with them, it has a very good score by Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, and features strong performances by Marsden and Langella. The movie's biggest weakness, predictably enough, is Cameron Diaz, who still can't act to save her life and appears to be concentrating really hard on maintaining her Southern accent every time she's onscreen.

Nothing about The Box is particularly innovative or unique in the pantheon of sci-fi thrillers, but that's not really important. What the movie excels at is tone, putting itself in the tradition of middlebrow science fiction such as The Twilight Zone (The Box is based on a short story that was adapted for an episode of one of the Twilight Zone revivals), which take plausible and believable characters and place them into dramatic situations that become increasingly strange and unsettling as the plot progresses. I like stories of this type: the best ones grab your attention by uniting the audience and the main characters in the task of trying to figure out exactly what the hell is going on. I wrote about this aspect a couple days ago by way of explaining what I like about Lost, and The Box hits many of the same points, doubling down on cryptic elements regularly and managing to be dramatically stylized without going completely over the top or rejecting its own internal logic.

Unfortunately, movies with this sort of tone don't seem to get made very often these days, and when they do, they don't tend to be very well received. The recent movie that I found myself comparing the feel of The Box to is this year's Knowing, which I also enjoyed for its employment of many of the aforementioned elements, and which was at one point slated to be directed by Kelly until that fell through and Alex Proyas took it over. Knowing was mostly brutalized by critics (with the exception of noted Proyas fanboy Roger Ebert, who gave it four stars) and The Box isn't doing much better. What is it about these type of films that fails to catch on? I have a few ideas.

First, I think that modern viewers have a tough time accepting the sort of pulp genre tone that blends dramatic realism with fantastical elements when it's not presented in the context of an action movie. Unlike the 50s and 60s, sci-fi and horror movies these days tend to be built around action sequences, not character interaction or suspenseful developments, which are now associated more or less exclusively with 'realistic' dramas. I think that this makes it harder for audiences to stomach the exaggerated tone of character-based genre films when it's presented non-ironically, although movies set in the past tend to get more of a pass on this than those set in the present day, probably because audiences can rationalize to themselves that people probably just acted that way back then. Interestingly enough, this summer's Moon, which shares some of the character-based mystery elements of The Box's narrative but has a gritter, less pulpy tone, was (deservedly) well-received critically.

There's a second factor that I think negatively impacts the modern audience's tolerance for character-based pulp drama: M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan's films employ a lot of the same qualities I've been discussing; a dramatic but exaggerated tone, a focus on how characters interact with implausible and inexplicable events, and an emphasis on the fantastical or supernatural that deepens throughout the plot. Many of his films have been successful, which would seem to bode well for the type of movie that I've been discussing. However, I believe that Shyamalan's emphasis on the twist ending has had a detrimental effect on how people evaluate the quality of movies like Knowing and The Box. Since The Sixth Sense, people walk into movies pitched as mysteries and sit through the whole thing trying to guess what the ending will be. The problem with this is that although the twist ending is a storied device of pulp drama, the power of these movies comes from how they suck you into the experience as it goes along. When you treat 90% of the movie as a mere set-up to be dispensed with before you can evaluate the worthiness of the ending, a lot of the enjoyment is lost. The Box has quite a few narrative turns beyond the initial premise, but it doesn't build up to some grand coda that subverts all your previous expectations, although I found the ending to be quite satisfying.

Cameron Diaz aside, The Box is the type of well-made pulp drama entertainment that I could use more of in this day and age. It also feature the type of bullshit generic name that I could use less of in this day and age, but never mind that. I'd put it far above the likes of yet another Christmas Carol remake and I think it's a return to form for Richard Kelly after Southland Tales (a mess of a movie that I actually find quite compelling in some respects) even if it doesn't wind up being a commercial success. I'll gladly sign on to see whatever his next movie is.