All right folks, it’s true that Avengers:Age of Ultron’s trailer finally debuted, but we need to quickly refocus our attention to an older film. The Box arrived onto the world in 2009 and it was a very ambitious film that didn’t really know its own limits. Needless to say, it’s not exactly at Avengers level and I can’t guarantee an epic viewing experience. What I can guarantee…is a story with more riddles than characters.

We start off this adventure with Norma and Arthur Lewis as they try to make ends meet. Arthur wants to go to Mars and Norma just wants to get through another semester at her school. Unfortunately, both of their dreams are shattered when Norma is basically fired and Arthur fails the psych exam. (Red Herring number 1) Luckily, a sketchy man by the name of Mr. Stewart gives them a box and tells them that they can push the button and receive 1 million dollars…at the cost of someone’s life. Will the heroes quickly realize what the morally correct decision is or will they run for the money? This is Hollywood, but more importantly…this is the planet Earth. Who wouldn’t push the button? (Average main characters only so we’re not counting naturally epic characters like Superman and Batman)

Well, that’s not a bad start right? Well, things get pretty crazy from there. You remember that red herring from earlier? Well, the film is full of them and many plots are introduced without any resolutions. Is Arthur a little crazy or is Mr. Stewart just messing with him? (My money’s on the latter) Mr. Stewart warns the heroes not to contact the police and he takes it pretty personally when they do, but why should he care? By the end of the film, we find out that the police can’t really do anything about it either. Why is the government so corrupt? Okay, let’s address these issues a little more coherently after we check out the main characters.

Norma is the first character to meet up with Mr. Stewart and she tries to make the most of it. She’s had a pretty tough time recently and she also suffered from an accident that left her without most of her foot. The idea of getting 1 million dollars is just too great for her and she crumbles. It’s pretty sad for her even if it was expected. The reason why I can’t really root for her is that Norma isn’t very realistic. I don’t mind unrealistic characters, but this was not a good thing here. I’m addressing her attitude towards Mr. Stewart. It was like the guy could do no wrong at some points. Even after he messed with their son and threatened the heroes multiple times, Norma treated him as if he was just a friend of theirs. She never really treated him as an enemy and that could definitely be pretty annoying.

Arthur isn’t much better although I dare say that I liked him a little more than Norma. His lack of realism comes from the Library chase scene and basically every scene in the second half of the film. A lot of supernatural things are happening and he takes it way too calmly. He doesn’t even seem to care half of the time as he just asks where the exit is…instead of wondering why the whole town is out to get him. He gets a classic rage mode scene where he threatens someone, but he doesn’t end up doing anything. Likewise, he grabs a gun during one scene, but he lacks the drive to pull through. It’s the hero’s move of course, but he still shouldn’t have let Mr. Stewart just walk out like that.

Mr. Stewart is the main villain and he’s not completely human. He doesn’t appear to possess any supernatural powers although he may have telepathy. He has alien technology that his employers gave him that allows him to subjugate anyone who is caught in the blue liquid. This gives him an army and then he’s ready to blackmail everyone. He throws a lot of threats around and he tries to be sympathetic as well, but I can’t say that it really worked. He betrayed the human race after the accident and he allowed himself to be corrupted. I don’t know why Arthur didn’t try to tackle him in the end. (You should have seen how Mr. Stewart ran!) At least Mr. Stewart can talk tough to the government and get away with it.

I don’t really like the main kid in this film so I’ll mainly bypass his section. He’s a little too much of a know it all and he’s not very smart when it comes to practical situations. He didn’t help matters for the heroes and he just ended up being a liability. Why couldn’t he have stayed home reading comics?

Okay, where to start! Things really blew up for the film when the nosebleeds start to happen. All of the townsfolk seem to be possessed at certain points before they “regain themselves” and try to help the heroes by giving signs. Pretty weak mind control eh? The expendables keep flip flopping in and out of their trance. We learn that they were all forced to go into the blue vat, which is how they lost their free will. So, are we to believe that all of these people were put into the pool? It seems like dozens upon dozens of people were thrown in…even a clown got in on the action! This is also fairly convenient for the bully from the beginning since we find out that he may have been possessed.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t add up. Mr. Stewart has no motive to make the kid insult Norma so we have to believe that he’s just normally a cheap character. Still, we do know that he was also possessed along with the bell boy so things start to get a little dicey. Mr. Stewart’s wife/right hand woman also jumps into the fray since she owns the library. It seems like she still has her free will, which is interesting, but I’m going to assume that she was meant to be possessed since it was out of place and Mr. Stewart is more alien than human now.

Once there, Arthur is given a choice between 3 portals. 2 will lead to Eternal Damnation and one will lead to Eternal Peace. Arthur obviously picks the Eternal Peace portal. (He found out after breaking through the mind control and getting the slaves to tell him, which the good portal was. Although, it was fairly obvious since two of the portals were dark blue and one was light blue) Unfortunately, he finds out that it was a sham since it just leads him back to his living room after a dimensional journey.

Spoiler Alert. I’ll just give you more time to get out of this paragraph with this line so that you can be sure to dodge the spoiler. The ending shows us that the two main characters are actually stuck in Purgatory and their choices here will result in whether they go to Heaven or Hell. (Or the film equivalents anyway) So, it is just the main characters in this place and everyone else is fake? Is everyone real and the whole town was thrown into Purgatory or is Earth itself already in Purgatory and it may have happened before they were born? The film will never bother to explain so you can make your own theories about it.

Of course, this brings us to the point of this whole charade. I guess it’s a morality test that Mr. Stewart has set up, but what about the town inhabitants that he has enslaved? Do they not deserve to get their own test to see if they are good people or have they already failed the test? One guy’s son is dragged off since I guess he completed his test, but now he’ll have to complete another one. The government warns him that his decision will have grave consequences, but he doesn’t seem to care since he’s basically drugged and out of it by that point.

Ah yes….the Government. Skeptics of the NSA will have a blast with this since they decide to work with a mad alien. Why did they just bow before Mr. Stewart so willingly? We actually see many armed guards just stand by the main villain with the NSA director just watching and (almost) crying. The NSA seems to be petrified of this guy, but it’s confirmed that a bullet is enough to destroy Mr. Stewart so they should be a little braver. He has some hi tech equipment, but he’s still just a guy. Let his “Employers” come…the NSA will just take them out too!

You could go on and on about this film for quite a long time, but you start to lose track of what’s going on with the film’s many plots. Mr. Stewart’s technology allows you to rid someone of their senses (2 out of 5 in this case) but then he can also give the person back their senses somehow. I suppose that he actually does have some powers to pull that off since it wasn’t a matter of tech that time. It’s sad for the humans since they’re basically powerless to stop these “high above” beings and they will just be toyed with. Even if they win their tests, these guys will just make new ones up so it’s ultimately pointless. The villains also seem confused since they go to the trouble of getting the wife and the son, but they allow Arthur to drive back home with Norma. (They still get the kid though) With their powers, they could have forced Arthur to stay back, but I guess it was all part of the plan.

The ending is pretty underwhelming as you may expect. It’s similar to a certain Ronin film and it’s not the kind of ending that you wouldn’t even wish upon your least favorite film! The heroes basically just accepted their insignificance in the grand scheme of things and allowed themselves to be puppets in the end. That’s not very satisfying if you ask me and they should have done something to escape their fate. Maybe next year…

I would talk about the soundtrack, but it’s basically nonexistent here. There’s not really a lot of romance so that’s always a plus. A little here and there, but it could be a lot worse. The bully at school is pretty wince worthy and the deformations can be a little hard to look at, but I suppose that it’s part of the point. I still wish that Arthur and Norma could have been a little more assertive in those scenes. The babysitter’s lies may have made for an intriguing moment and especially as she went through the motel with the brain controlled zombies, but we all had a feeling that the plot would vanish given the film’s track record. Everything goes back to nothing. (I don’t believe that all of the town’s folk could be kidnapped by the NSA and nobody would notice…it’s a bit of a stretch)

Overall, The Box is the kind of film that you would only want to watch if you like to watch films that are very vague so that you can make up your own version of what happened. There are some scenes that are fairly interesting and they had potential, but the film couldn’t live up to it. It just blew itself up along the way and ended up going out with a whimper. I do applaud the fact that is tried to be contain so much in a single film, but it couldn’t pull it off. Don’t bite off more than you can chew after all. (Meta + Unexplained, Convoluted Plotlines + Arthur = Loss) If you want a complex film filled with mystery and adventure…check out The Big Sleep. It’s a classic and I dare say that it’s a little more suspenseful.

Overall 3/10