I have to admit that I’ve been looking forward to this for some time, ever since I first heard about it.  The plot was so unique, so almost unlike anything I’d heard of before, that I couldn’t help but get into the concept.  And today, we’re talking about The Box, which Warner Brothers sent a copy of–a movie that got me excited from its inception.  But will it disappoint?  Let’s find out!

The Box involves a young family in 1976 with a serious problem–they’re having some serious money troubles, and are thus forced to delay a needed surgery.  But the family gets an interesting opportunity in the form of a box.  The box has a button on top, and should the button be pressed, two things will happen: one, someone, somewhere in the world, whom the young couple doesn’t know, will die.  Two, the couple will be paid one million dollars, tax free.

They take the offer.

I know, spoiler, but this is only where things BEGIN, not end.  Because after they press that button, they’re wracked with guilt.  And they set out to find out just who it was who died.  And the seeking reveals a whole lot more than they ever wanted to know.

Clearly, The Box was going for high-brow artsy sort of suspense / thriller–at least I hope that’s what they were going for, because otherwise, I TOTALLY missed the point.  There are even some shades of science fiction thrown in here, that really nasty Pod People kind of science fiction where nothing really makes sense even after they explain it to you a couple times.

Surrealist. Yes, that’s likely the best way to explain The Box.  It’s wildly surrealist, a thriller with notes of science fiction and horror tossed in on the side.  In fact, after about the first hour or so, this thing’s going to wildly off the rails and have virtually no further contact with the land of Making Sense and Being Possible.

Thankfully, though, there will be some recovery, especially if you’ve been paying attention all this time, and the end result is that you too can make some sense out of this gigantic pile of weird.

The Screenhead Ten Scale is hard pressed to pigeonhole this often otherworldly film and thus assigns it a six out of ten.  it’s better than the average, those parts which I understood anyway, but so much of this movie will be lost in a haze of baffling plot elements and be rendered nearly unwatchable.