THE BOX: Movie Trailer
I’ve seen a trailer for a movie, The Box, that looks intriguing that I’ll pass along here. Following is the plot summary fromt the Internet Movie Database:
Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child, receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger, delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button. But, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world; someone they don’t know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the cross-hairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.
As I did a little Internet research The Box has a few promising possibilities. First, it is based upon the Richard Matheson short story “Button, Button.” Second, the film is directed by Richard Kelly, the writer responsible for the cult films Donnie Darko. Beyond this the film has already played at a film festival in Sweden and seems to have been well received. The Box opens November 6 in the U.S.
I can see this being a frustrating movie to watch for a lot of people. On the one hand will be the people who will say “no, obviously no, don’t press the button.” On the other will be the people who will say “well yeah, of course press the button you idiots.” The moral grey area between will probably just seem annoying to those on either end. Even if they try to spice it up by adding a death penalty for not pressing the jolly, red, candy-like button, it will just whittle the one end down to the extreme pacifists who are willing to die so none come to harm and add exponentially to the other end of “then yeah, absolutely I’d do it.”
I guess it might be frustrating for folks, Cory, but to me it raises the kind of interesting moral dilemmas that make good cinema worth watching. I hope this film is as good as the trailer hints at.
I must admit a deep love of these sort of “faced with an absurd moral dilemma” flicks. The sort of you-wake-up-in-a-room flicks that test what we would or would not do if all the contexts we use to guide us were stripped away.
Sadly, I often find them frustrating because the plots of the film seem to inevitably involve the characters searching for and finding a sort of third way escape route rather than focusing on them actually having to confront the dilemma at hand. The lesson seems to be that one doesn’t have to confront hard moral choices, but rather cleverly escape them.
That said, I’m all over this thing like white on rice.