If they poked pointed sticks at children who stuttered, “The Box” wouldn’t be more offensive.
If they mocked cancer patients, “The Box” couldn’t be more offensive.
Honestly, I’ve not seen a movie more antithetical to my worldview than “The Box.” And it’s not even well done.
I didn’t really want to see it but I don’t get out much without the kids and this was the only thing playing at the time so I got myself some popcorn and a bucket of Diet Coke and sat myself down for a moral conundrum movie.
OK. We all know the premise. Strange creepy looking guy with half a face gives Cameron Diaz and the guy from X-Men a box with a button inside. He tells them that if they push the button two things will happen. One, they get a million bucks. Two, someone they don’t know dies.
The movie for some reason is set in 1976. Why that is, I can’t fathom except so it could be set in the days when a million bucks really meant something.
Now I’m down with moral conundrum movies. But I had no great interest in seeing “The Box” mainly because I think Cameron Diaz is essentially a giggly mobile mannequin. But there aren’t a lot of giggles in this movie. And I’m cool with that. Like I said, I dig moral conundrum movies. But they have to be real moral conundrums.
Unfortunately, this supposedly regular couple is given a million bucks for a death of someone they don’t know and their moral quibbling boils down to “hey, people die all the time so no major biggie if someone dies because of this button or from an earthquake.” Well it seems they forgot the whole conundrum thing. Diaz just pouted at the box for a few scenes and pushes it without much buildup.
They make it clear that she did it so that her son could have all the advantages that a million bucks can bring a young person. (Just ask Lindsey Lohan how that’s working out for her) We soon find out that someone did actually die and that the woman who died was, in fact, the woman who had pushed the button before Diaz.
Strange thing. We see three couples push the button in the movie and all three times it was the wife who pushed the button. Kind of an Adam and Eve thing, I guess. Actually, there’s all sorts of Christian imagery in the movie from manger scenes in the background to crosses on walls. And it would actually work well in a movie which actually had a cohesive moral point but this movie cleverly managed to avoid anything like a point. Just as they forgot the whole conundrum part, they also forgot the moral.
BIG SPOILERS BELOW!!!!
It turns out that the creepy guy with The Box is an alien and he works with a whole lot of aliens and they’re giving the boxes out as a test on humanity’s altruism – which it seems that humanity is failing pretty dismally, mind you.
So the couple does all sorts of investigating which means that they walk around sneakily and the bad guys essentially find them and lay out their entire plan to them for no apparent reason. And I’m like “C’mon Shaggy and Scoob have to work harder for clues than these people.” But I had my popcorn and a now half filled bucket of Diet Coke so I was still reasonably happy. I really was.
And then the creepy guy with half a face comes back and gives Cameron Diaz and the dude from X-Men a new ultimatum. He tells them their son is locked in the upstairs bathroom but he is now blind and deaf and will remain so unless the dude from X-Men kills his wife. So here’s the upshot: They can either live on with their million dollars and their disabled son, or the dude from X-Men can shoot his wife through the heart at which point the son’s sight and hearing will be restored and the million will be placed in a bank account for the boy.
Now normally I’d say a movie where Cameron Diaz dies in the end is a winner but in this case her murder by her husband is presented as a noble end which is depicted as elevating humanity because he kills her to give his child’s senses back and some mad cash, of course. So the father killing the mother is a happy ending? Is that really the message?
The son’s got some disabilities so the Dad kills the Mom to restore him? Seriously. A man murdering his wife is the happy ending? Really? And I could tell that this was supposed to be the inspiring ending because the music told me so.
Oh wait, I forgot this part. Cameron Diaz tells her husband that it’s OK is he kills her because the creepy guy smiled when she asked if there was an afterlife. I’m serious. That’s really what she said. She pretty much says “Sayonara, see you in a few years when you go to your afterlife” and dies peacefully from a massive smoking hole in the middle of her chest.
And then the dude from X-Men gets taken away by the aliens after receiving approving looks from top secret government guys standing on his lawn.
And then we cut to the alien creepy guy strolling slowly by a manger scene and he tips his hat.
And I’m like “What?!” I honestly felt like stopping the three other people in the theater on the way out to ask if they understood something I didn’t. I didn’t. I just shook the popcorn off my shirt and loudly slurped my empty bucket of Diet Coke.
I’m still trying to work it out. The movie tut-tuts people causing the death of a stranger for the good of their child but then weirdly ends with praising the killing of the child’s mother for the good of the child. I’m not sure I saw a real distinction there but the movie makers clearly did.
And all I could think was that maybe this movie was an unintentionally telling benchmark on our national psyche. Are we so far gone as a society with abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia and an overall lack of morals that we can’t even have decent moral conundrum movies. You see, for a moral conundrum movie to work you first need morals.
November 17, 2009 at 3:28 am
"I honestly felt like stopping the three other people in the theater…"
Theres the tipoff, this is a stinkeroo from Jump Street.
When I saw "Tank Girl" there were more folks in the theater and one of the subplots of that award winner was the reincarnation of rappers Ice Cube & Ice Tea in the bodies of mutant kangaroos. So "The Box" must REALLY hurt!
Honestly, ask for a refund.
November 17, 2009 at 4:33 am
I saw the movie for much the same reason: liking moral conundrum movies. I actually didn't know until today that that was supposed to be a happy ending, or that moral approval was intended. I just ended up feeling it was a depressing movie, which took a very negative view of human beings…
You are right though…
November 17, 2009 at 4:45 am
[RESPONSE TO SPOILER WARNING]
It turns out that the creepy guy with The Box is an alien and he works with a whole lot of aliens and they're giving the boxes out as a test on humanity's altruism – which it seems that humanity is failing pretty dismally, mind you.
What I thought of when I read that was City Slickers where Ed is trying to construct a scenario in which Mitch would cheat on his wife. Mitch keeps poking holes in the logistics, so Ed says, "Ok, a beautiful human-looking alien comes down…" and Mitch says, "Oh good…reality." Seems to be a trend–don't like reality? Posit aliens.
Scott W.
November 17, 2009 at 5:09 am
Thanks for taking that cheap shot at me, Matthew. I thought it was a really deep movie. I haven't had to think that hard since that police officer asked me to say the alphabet backwards.
November 17, 2009 at 5:54 am
Wasn't this just a rehash of a Twilight Zone episode?
November 17, 2009 at 6:05 am
I would have thought you'd been around enough Sci-Fi to put the two concepts together. The aliens were supposed to be "God" (i.e. the higher lifeforms who gave us all the neat technology of the ancient world which we privitive humans mistook for gods) and from which we humans recieved our first moral codes. Their modern presence in "the box" was the Old Testament "trials" which "god" sent humans (i.e. Noah and the Ark, Lot and Soddom and Gamorrah, Abraham and Isaac etc) for which humanity visibly passed or failed according to the morality which "god" laid out for them. Hence all the religious imagery and aliens (i.e. we're all really worshiping aliens/higher beings). Get it now?
November 17, 2009 at 7:12 am
There is someone named Cameron around and the person is a woman??!! What in the world has happened to the idea that there are women's names and men's names??!!
November 17, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Hence all the religious imagery and aliens (i.e. we're all really worshiping aliens/higher beings). Get it now?
That thought did occur to me and I'll go out on a limb and guess it occured to Matt as well, but the bigger fish to fry is the film's wholesale endorsement of consequentialism. It is my earnest hope that it isn't a "telling benchmark on our national psyche", but I fear it is.
Scott W.
November 17, 2009 at 1:45 pm
There is someone named Cameraon and te person is a woman
And I thought I lived under a rock.
Wow, thanks for the head's up—I thought this might actually have been an interesting movie. Witness the power of advertising.
November 17, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Dear me; how could you possibly see the ads on TV and think this was going to be any good? This is some liberal "question" that has been going around for at least 10 years, maybe more. If your child has been on a school sponsored camping trip,or retreat, or any other group activity without parents; they have been asked this question. "If you could push a button and kill any one in the world, with no consequences to you, who would you kill". My child said, "no one, what kind of weird question is that?" Her camp leader said," I would kill George Bush". Ok. I am so glad my child was required to attend this event in order to graduate from high school. Thank God it was a Christian School- who knows WHAT they would have said otherwise.
There is a certain segment of society, many of whom reside in Hollywood, who think killing people is the first and best answer to any problem. I call it the Terminator syndrome. Let's look at a "moral turning point" in one of those movies: (just for a second).John Connor's mother, Madame Androgynous, has to stop an inventor from inventing something which will DESTROY THE WORLD – what does she do? Try to get a message to him? Try to meet him and explain things? Try to sabotage the invention? Noooo , silly! – she breaks in to his home like a SWAT team on steroids and shoots him up and terrorizes his family. Her son stops her from actually killing him. PHEW! Close one , 'cause we have to kill him LATER when he breaks in to the lab to stop this calamity. And the level of moral thinking hasn't gotten any better than that since. Basically, a moral conundrum in Hollywood-land is : you are expected to behave unless someone offers you a million dollars. Then all bets are off.
November 17, 2009 at 3:32 pm
One problem with moral-dilemma questions, is that they tend to posit the person has absolutely no conscience.
So for instance (we were discussing this last night) the old "Is it OK to lie to the Nazis who come to your door and ask if you have any Jews in the basement?"
A normal person in that situation would lie. Sure, we're not supposed to lie, but seriously, who would sit there and think "Hmm..better that the folks in the basement should be killed than I tell a falsehood to this fine young man…."
Same with the button question. A normal person wouldn't have to think– they'd say "Heck no. Killing people is bad"
Maybe it's actually a HORROR movie… and Diaz and Husband play that nice young couple next door who voted for Obama because the fate of the unborn is less important than their own health insurance bill? (which is going to go up anyway… haha…suckers!)
Of course, I always thought the scariest part of "Rosemary's Baby" was the fact that the creepy husband willingly SOLD HIS WIFE TO SATAN for a nicer house with a pool. Demonic pregnancy, no problem… but that HUSBAND??? UGH.
November 17, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Mari wins the thread. Excellent comment.
The premise of this movie kind of reminded me of "Indecent Proposal" – a million bucks to buy a night of sex with someone's wife. That movie should have lasted five minutes and ended with Woody Harrelson slugging Robert Redford in the jaw… unless you pad it out for the trial, in which the judge says, "You had it coming, you creepy old hippie. Loved you in 'Butch Cassidy,' by the way."
Annnnnnd…. scene.
November 17, 2009 at 10:34 pm
So, what did the kiddies think, Matthew? No wonder you felt compelled to post that Sasha Baron Cohen youtube clip 😉
November 17, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Didn't take the kids to see that one. If I did you should call Child Services on me.
November 17, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Matt, I love your site, and hate to have to disagree but here goes.
First, I just want to say that I'm not sure I "get" the movie entirely, and really would need to watch it again. So, my defense ain't gonna be grand.
[Spoilers throughout, natch]
As you point out, the movie isn't big on the conundrum. I was initially suprised by that as well, because that's what I had gone to the movie expecting. In fact, while the movie was pitched as a moral conundrum movie, that element is pretty quickly dispensed with. What remains?
What the movie is big on is "You've sinned. Now what?" You ask for a moral, and I thought the movie kinda hammered that home— how many times is something like the phrase "Actions have consequences" uttered?
You're right on about the religious imagery, which is constant. I think that's definitely the key. Diaz and hubby are Adam and Eve. They mess up. Like, baaaaddd. (Note how their actions could doom all of humanity.)
What follows their sin is the quest for redemption. I'm not going to go too in depth with a strict analogical interpretation, but I think the following two points are important. This is because I haven't worked out a grand interpretation of the film, but think these moments bear consideration for a later attempt to do so.
First, the three water "closets" (literally, not wcs as for the brits) that the husband is offered. Mention is made of salvation and damnation, depending on which he picks. Following the pick, and his entry into the moving (living?) water, he is transported to a heavenly realm, and then crashes down onto his wife, covering both with water, as baptismal an image as you could imagine.
Secondly, I was really struck by the ending. Diaz is shot through her heart because of her son. I remember that it was made clear that it had to be through the heart. With the whole Mary as the new Eve thing, I immediately thought of Mary's heart being pierced. ( The explicit mention of forgiveness, purgatory, and the afterlife in the pre-death climactic scene certainly made me pay more attention.)
There's a lot more there, and a lot I don't know about (such as, if it's really Christian, is there a Jesus figure and if so, who?, the issue of "No Exit" and if they are in purgatory themselves, etc.) but I was really taken with this movie. I saw it, not as a moral conundrum movie gone awry, but as a movie about what follows sin. Our initial moral reaction, "Just don't push the button" is about as natural as, "Just don't eat the apple" but in both cases, that's not what happened.
Anyhoo, that's my take. Feel free to take me to task.
— Alfred
November 19, 2009 at 9:20 pm
you've obviously made the mistake of assuming this movie WASN'T made by a bunch of drug-addled sophomoric freaks.
Spoiler alert –
It was.
July 18, 2010 at 6:11 am
To be honest I thought you were right. And I agree with one of the comments that talks about the aliens being God. Just a tip you probably should watch your speach. This, "normally I'd say a movie where Cameron Diaz dies in the end is a winner", is not a good example of the way a catholic should speak. There are too many agry people in this world not enough saints. Please give us a Catholic point of view not and angry man's point of view.