While there are some imaginative effects and spooky moments (as well as a few hackneyed sci-fi touches) the whole thing gets pretty silly at times, and the mystery is never fully resolved.
Comment
11/05/09
The Box (2009)
47
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:90
Fresh:42
Rotten:48
Average Rating:5.3/10
Consensus: Imaginative but often preposterous, The Box features some thrills but largely feels too piecemeal.
Rated: 12A [See Full Rating]
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:04-12-2009
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
If you make a preposterous movie that isn't boring, I count that as some kind of a triumph.
11/06/09
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
I KNEW I had seen this somewhere before.
11/07/09
After a slightly promising start, this great-looking but ultimately deeply confusing and unscary sci-fi/horror opus turns into a quite boring rehash of M. Night Shyamalan's post-Signs films.
11/06/09
A sequence shot in the Boston Public Library (even though the film is set in Virginia) is creepier than anything in the splatterporn movies that pass for horror these days.
11/06/09
An interesting subtext occurs with this particular "box." More than just rude slang for a woman's genitalia, the title points to the fact that in this story, it's only the ladies who misbehave. Issues, Mr. Kelly?
11/09/09
What button, on whose box, did Kelly push to get the money to make this awful, preposterous thriller?
11/04/09
Never has Richard Matheson's visionary work been so badly served! This is foolish, maudlin, confusing, pretentious poppycock.
11/07/09
Has stylish production values and a somewhat creepy performance by the talented Frank Langella, but it's often too lazily constructed, unimaginative and lacking much-needed suspense.
11/07/09
A confounding sci-fi mystery on one level and a tortured existential treatise on the other, pondering the nature of man in relation to God.
11/06/09
Somebody get Richard Kelly a Katherine Heigl romantic comedy stat, or else we might have yet another talented filmmaker unable to wiggle free from his own cavernous pretension.
11/06/09
There's very little meat on the bones of this movie that's little more than an extended 'Twilight Zone' episode at best and a Stephen King TV movie at worst.
11/05/09
Sincere and sinister and inevitably ambitious.
11/06/09
Top Critic[T]he ambition of the movie makes it sort of intriguing, too, even if it fails -- spectacularly -- in the end...
11/09/09
The best thing about the movie is that, if Kelly was really aiming to please the average popcorn-munchers, he fails. He can't help it.
11/08/09
It’s not slick, standard sci-fi, sure -- and that’s a good thing.
11/05/09
Impales itself on the smug awareness of how stuffed full of extraordinarily twisty ideas it is, without bothering to make sure that those ideas add up to anything halfway worthwhile.
11/10/09
Badly paced, plotted, directed and acted, the film really defies understanding how and why anyone other than Kelly not only would want to see it, but would make it in the first place.
11/06/09
I think that Richard Kelly, from one film to the next, has gone in some very interesting and sometimes puzzling directions.
11/09/09
Latest News for The Box
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...
September 28, 2009:
New: Brand New Movie Trailer/Poster
More...
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