The Box

March 29, 2010 The Box

I re-lived the experience I had when I saw the trailer of Spiderman II. Who says making a trailer isn’t a work of art!

The Box exemplifies this in every way. But who wouldn’t get fooled with the interesting concept? A family facing a cash crunch and a rough patch in life is faced with a stranger who leaves a box at their doorsteps. The deal is simple – “Press the button & you get a million dollars in cash. The only flipside is that someone somewhere, unknown to the family will die on pressing the button”.

Should you go ahead or not?

What starts off rather slowly till a point where you say “get on with the thrill”, gets realllllly interesting. Lacklustre CGI and a tense plot keeps you feeling that a creepy scene will be there just round the corner.

But what sounds like a good 2 hours to be spent ends up being your worst nightmare, with the story getting overly confusing till a point when you totally feel cheated – is this about aliens? Is it a governement brainwash project? Or is it just a lot of money badly spent on a lacklustre plot?

Not that I dont love philosophy, but I fail to understand why such a twisted & confused plot to delve into Purgatory!

Stars Cameron Diaz as a very boring lead act. No one else worth mentioning actually. Based on a short story, I wish they had left it that way.

Rating: 3/10

Edit: My interpretation for those who dont mind spoilers:

The box is just a mechanism to assess our moral fibre. Pressing the box makes you yeild to greed, thereby losing yourself. It is rather tragic that philosophically, your spouse is left with an option to either lead the life with a blind & deaf child in the state of purgatory, or restore his senses at the expenses of shooting his better half in the heart.

The fact that when you choose, you lose yourself, from your selfish former self, to the now reformed new you, through the ultimate act of selflessness, by forgoing your life for your loved ones. Pressing the box does not result in the death of a random person, other than you. It rather just triggers a series of weird events that will result in you becoming that stranger you didnt think you would encounter.

Interesting concept, but very poorly explained & executed.

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