3.5, United States/Canada

The Box

2009 / Richard Kelly > As a kid, I was pretty obsessed with classic Twilight Zone episodes. They were all about possibility and imagination, about the world that may be out there without us knowing. Kelly, after his commercial fuck-up in Southland Tales, pastes on Cameron Diaz and brings forth The Box, which, in the most positive way possible, is a feature length version of a 1950s Twilight Zone episode. With a bigger budget allowing for a fully realized and more refined production process, the film allows us to enter the mindset of mid-century America with fears of the Cold War. Except, of course, there are more sinister things in the air than Communists. There’s some level of campiness involved here, no doubt, but if one can accept that as part of the experience, this is an unpretentious sci-fi treat not often found in today’s cinema.

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