The Box | 
 enlarge | Director: Richard Kelly
Actors: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn, Holmes Osborne
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.96
Buy Used: $2.89
You Save: $17.07 (86%)
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Rating:  114 reviews
Sales Rank: 2845
Format: NTSC, Widescreen, Color, Subtitled
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Running Time: 115 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: WARD042684D
UPC: 883929037834
EAN: 0883929037834
ASIN: B001UV4XWY
Theatrical Release Date: November 25, 2009
Release Date: February 23, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Director Richard Kelly has crafted yet another evocative, spectacular, maddening film guaranteed to provoke passionate love-it or hate-it responses. Though far more straightforward than his previous cult favorites, Donnie Darko or Southland Tales, The Box is crammed just as full of stunning visuals and ambiguous metaphysics. Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz of Charlie's Angels and James Marsden of X-Men) find a plainly wrapped package on their doorstep one day. Inside is a strange box with a large, red button--and if they press that button, explains a courtly but alarming-looking gentleman (Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon), they will receive a million dollars… and someone they don't know will die. This is but the starting point for an increasingly creepy tale, featuring eye-popping wallpaper, spontaneous nosebleeds, allusions to Jean-Paul Sartre, overly attentive library patrons, boxes of water, warehouses full of light, and a bell-ringing Santa Claus standing in the middle of a road. Some of it makes sense, some of it doesn't, but the person who's going to love this movie won't care. The Box's true power lies in the slow accumulation of dizzying hypnotic images and a tangible sense of unease and anticipation. Kelly aspires to capture the beauty and terror of existence on film; even if he doesn't succeed--and every viewer will have to decide that for himself or herself--his sheer ambition is remarkable. --Bret Fetzer
Product Description
A small wooden box arrives on the doorstep of a married couple who know that opening it will grant them a million dollars and kill someone they dont know. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 02/23/2010 Starring: Cameron Diaz Frank Langella Run time: 116 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Richard Kelly
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 114
 Didn't deliver! I just didn't get it! September 6, 2010
Joshua D. Washburn (Chicago, IL USA)
What a terrible movie! The plot started off great, but things only got worse. It was as if they left off 15-20 minutes at the end of movie. Don't listen to people who gave this movie a positive review. This movie stinks!
Think Inside the Box August 19, 2010
Elliott (L.A.)
"EHT XOB." If you can't figure out what the two encoded words inside this quote are and feel that they may come from some, say, extraterrestrial tongue, you may find this film to be quite intriguing. Of course, I know what the words are because I encoded them myself! It seems to me that this film employs the same kind of logic contained in the preceding sentences.
I feel this production should come with a disclaimer at the beginning: Contains ideas and images meaningful only to the filmmaker. A couple, portrayed by James Marsden and Cameron Diaz, live in a comfortable home in Richmond. He's involved in research at NASA, and she's a teacher. So far, so good. But it quickly goes bonkers. A box is left on their front doorstep while they are sleeping. Inside the box is another box, which has a large button on top. Soon, a weird guy (wearing a rather dapper hat) shows up and tells the couple that if either pushes the button, they will get a million dollars. (This was back in the early seventies when you could buy something with a million.) Of course, there's a catch. . .
Well, all this occurs in the first few moments, so I haven't spoiled anything. The film does its own spoiling. There are all kinds of bloody noses, zombies in the library, snow that falls without touching anything, giant wind tunnel fans, Vikings on Mars, and a motel swimming pool that doubles as a portal to. . .
I looked up writer/director/producer Richard Kelly in Wikipedia. I watched the film again. All of this did help me to follow and understand the story a lot better. But I still cannot recommend this tangled hodgepodge to anyone. The brightest element was Cameron Diaz's sterling performance.
 well... it sort of works August 8, 2010
B. E Jackson (Pennsylvania)
I think I'm completely confused. Something doesn't seem quite right with the Box. The storyline in the beginning is about an old man who drops off a mysterious box in front of a families house real early in the morning.
Later on, the old man returns and explains to the couple (the wife specifically) what exactly will happens when she presses this button connected to the box. Someone will then die. It will be someone the wife doesn't know, but someone WILL in fact die. However, the family will then receive 1 million bucks just for simply pressing the button.
It brings up an interesting question- would *you* push that button knowing how much money you'd receive, and considering how bad the economy is right now? You could use it!
So the next 30 minutes is about the wife and husband asking each other whether they should press the button or not. A good moment of detail is when the husband asks his wife if she believes she will feel any remorse for someone being killed that they don't even know.
The wife apparently has no sympathy whatsoever and doesn't care either way- she just wants the money because of all the problems the family is going through at the current time.
Anyway, what completely confuses me is just WHAT the heck happened? The storyline seemed to point to a movie being about a crazy murderer on the loose and threatening random people around town... but then -to my total shock- the Box actually turns into a sci-fi???
Yup, that old man with a huge gash on the side of his face is actually someone who got strike by lightning, was killed, came back from the dead and turned into an alien. I guess. He has these amazing abilities that nobody else on the planet has, and considering so much of the storyline focus was about the planet Mars, I assume he was some kind of alien.
He sure loved giving people nosebleeds. It seemed like everyone had a nosebleed at some point.
Oh well, the point is- the storyline shows absolutely NO signs of turning into a weird sci-fi flick, but that's exactly what the second half is about. Oh sure, before the second half everyone was walking around acting a bit quiet and strange, but there's plenty of non-alien reasons for that!
I feel disappointed. However, the fact that the storyline actually has some rather terrifying moments and tells a fairly easy to understand story makes me reconsider my initial reaction of giving it 3 stars. It's actually a good movie, but it's not at ALL what I expected. Keep that in mind.
Later on the storyline gets even better when the old man returns and put the wife and husband in *another* tricky situation with another life-changing decision. What will they do? How will they answer the question? You'll have to watch it to find out.
I don't think I quite got the ending, but whatever. We can't expect perfecton *all* the time!
One of the worst Sci-Fi movies ever August 8, 2010
TomP
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I rarely write movie reviews, but having just finished watching this one I felt compelled to do so. The central theme was basically stolen from a Star Trek Next Generation episode that featured a super advanced being named "Q", who decided to test the crew. Based on the test results, Q was to decide if the entire human species was to survive. Well, the idea is the same here, but the execution is simply horrible. The whole plot makes little sense, and the only part of the movie that gets the viewer's attention is the first 10 minutes. Afterwards the plot degenerates into a series of completely implausible, boring, and repetitive events. I hope that if one day we are to be "evaluated" by some whimsical supreme being, that he does not get a hold of a copy of "The Box". If he does, it will surely result in the annihilation of our species!
 You like Richard Kelly or you don't. August 8, 2010
Nicolas Garceau (Canada, Montreal)
I watched Donnie Darko many years ago and I loved it. When Southland Tales came out I saw it, thought it was very well done but the story was a bit too much. This movie, The Box, has the same kind of atsmosphere and dark sci-fi surreal story as those 2 movies and the story is thought provoking. I loved it. I don,t get the bad reviews at all. If you liked Richard Kelly's previous movies, surely you will like this one too. Also recommended for fans of David Lynch.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 114
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