Film Friday: The Box (2009)

When it comes to films, I’m all for creativity. Interesting camera angles, unique visual tricks, and neat twists of chronology all have the potential to truly enhance a film and make it stand out. But there’s a catch. The creativity needs to serve a purpose, otherwise it’s just a gimmick, and gimmicks get annoying fast. One film that suffers from misuse of such gimmicks is The Box, a 2009 science fiction story based on Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button.”

** spoiler alert **

Matheson, by the way, is one of science fiction’s greats. His most famous works include “I Am Legend” and “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” and many of his works have ended up as films or Twilight Zone episodes. Even “Button, Button” was made into a Twilight Zone (1985 version) before it was made into The Box.

The Box is the story of a young couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, who have no chemistry) who receive a box from a mysterious man, who offers them one million dollars if they push the button on top of the box. The catch? Someone they don’t know will die when they push the button. In and of itself, this makes a fairly interesting premise for a psychological character study. Would you push the button? Does it matter that you do or don’t know the people? What happens if you and your spouse disagree? What happens if you push the button and then change your mind?

Yet pushing the button is only the beginning of the plot. Without giving too much away, it soon turns out that the box delivering man, Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), works for some very powerful people, and they have the power to control the minds of people all around the unhappy couple. This turns the film into a mystery the characters try to solve who these people are, how they are controlling people, and why they are doing it. All told, this should make the plot very interesting and well worth seeing. But there are major problems with this film that kept me from enjoying it, and those problems were entirely avoidable.

First, director Richard Kelly sets the film in 1976. So what's wrong with 1976? Well, for starters, this is not the kind of film that benefits from being a period piece, unless there's a good reason for it, e.g. you're spanning time. Here the reason will not be obvious to most people and is not strong enough to justify making this a period piece (he wants the film to coincide with a Mars probe). That makes this feel like a gimmick, and it becomes annoying as you find yourself waiting to find out why the film is set in 1976. . . only to discover there's no real reason. Further, 1976 is not far enough back to be a sufficiently interesting period. Consequently, you end up feeling that the director chose 1976 just so he could play music from that period and have several scenes where the television announces some “new” sitcom that eventually would become a classic -- a total cliché for modern period pieces.

Secondly, even though this film could have taken place anywhere in the world, Kelly chose Richmond as a setting. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, except that Kelly uses the setting as a reason to have Cameron Diaz fake a “Virginia” accent, something she does very, very poorly. Again, there is no reason to have done this and it comes across as yet another gimmick.

Third, Kelly tries to build drama by stretching out his scenes. This is a trick that various great directors have mastered -- Quentin Tarantino comes to mind. But whereas Tarantino fills his scenes with compelling dialog and a steadily building level of tension, Kelly just stretches each scene. This causes the film to feel slow and meandering, even though the nature of the plot should make it fast-paced. It also comes across like a heavy-handed, film-school gimmick.

Kelly also repeatedly demonstrates a lack of faith in his audience. For example, he keeps beating you over the head with the idea that he's withholding key elements from the audience and that this is the kind of film that won’t explain everything. But at the same time, he tells you the information he is supposedly withholding if you just pay attention to what the radio and the background characters tell you. And in case you miss it the first time, they repeat themselves a dozen times. And just in case you still missed it, he repeatedly interjects scenes where two characters suddenly begin explaining to each other what is about to happen (or what just happened) and what it means.

Yet, at the same time, Kelly is too coy and waits too long to get into the plot details. Thus, you’re confronted with scenes like the opening scene, where a student humiliates Diaz seemingly for no reason. You will understand much later what possessed the student to act this way (though Diaz’s reaction makes no sense), but until that happens you’re left with a scene that just strains credibility and drags the movie down.

Continuing the lack of faith issue, Kelly doesn't trust that his audience will accept his characters' choices, so he stacks the deck. Indeed, rather than letting the young couple decide on their own whether or not to push the button, the first several minutes of the film are a set up where everything the couple has relied upon financially is slowly taken away from them. Thus, the film itself justifies their decision to push the button and thereby resolves the moral issue that theoretically sits at the center of this movie, i.e. the film excuses their behavior. Kelly then repeats this trick several times throughout the film to make the paths the couple should choose obvious in each instance. It would have been much better not to manipulate the circumstances, but to let the characters deal with their own thoughts and emotions honestly.

All in all, Kelly had in his grasp a fantastic story with incredible potential. But he kept mucking it up with pointless gimmicks that did nothing but distract from the film, and he weakened the underlying dilemmas by manipulating the circumstances to make the moral decisions much easier for his characters. If he hadn’t done these things, I would be screaming that everyone should see this film. As it is, all I can really say is that it was an interesting film that I'm glad I saw, but I don’t want to see it again, and I can’t help but think that I would have been better off just reading the short story.

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Film Friday: I Am Legend (2007)

I Am Legend is anything but legendary. Yes, it made a lot of money, Will Smith always does. And yes, it is an enjoyable, if forgettable, way to waste an afternoon. But it should have been so much more. The sad truth about I Am Legend is the filmmakers missed no opportunity to miss an opportunity. They stripped every interesting element from the film, until all that was left was a bland zombie movie. The always-likable Will Smith, who does an excellent job, deserved more from the script than the filmmakers gave him.

** spoiler alert **

The Premise

I Am Legend is the story of Robert Neville (Will Smith), the last man alive. It is based on the 1954 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. This novel has twice before been brought to the screen, first by Vincent Price in The Last Man On Earth (1964) and then by Charlton Heston in The Omega Man (1971). The premise is straight forward. A man-made virus, intended to cure cancer, quickly spreads around the world. The virus kills 90% of the population, leaving around 600 million survivors. But the virus warps all but 12 million of the survivors into mindless, murderous creatures called “dark seekers,” which look a bit like the CGI Gollum from Lord of the Rings. These creatures have the mental capacity and desires of the infected humans (zombies) from 28 Days Later, but cannot stand exposure to direct sunlight. They kill off the remaining humans in short order, apart from Will Smith.

Smith happens to be a virologist who is trying to determine why he was naturally immune to the virus, and to convert that immunity into an antidote, which he hopes will return the dark seekers back to their prior human state. During the days he and his German shepherd Sam hunt for food in a New York City that has become overgrown with nature. At night he works in his lab, which is constructed inside his house. The premise is all well and good, but it offers nothing more than your average zombie movie. And sadly, neither does the rest of the film.

What Makes Us Human? Who Cares?

The primary issue one would expect to be addressed by a film like I Am Legend is the question of what makes us human. Indeed, consider for a moment what made the book so interesting that it’s been brought to the screen three times. In the book, Neville spends his days killing the creatures and his nights locked in his home. One day, he stumbles upon a young woman who appears to be a survivor. He soon learns, however, that she is part of a group that is infected, but have begun to overcome their disease. They are slowly rebuilding society. But, from their perspective, every day, Neville comes along and kills their friends while they sleep. When Neville learns this, he finally understands the reversal that has taken place. Whereas vampires had been the legend that terrified humanity, he is now the creature that terrorizes this new race. He has become their bogeyman, their legend. Indeed, they eventually catch him, and before they execute him, Neville states that he has become “a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.” In this manner, the book deals with questions like what makes us human and at what point does another creature become so close to being human that we should treat it as such.

Will Smith’s movie repeats these elements individually, but without connecting the dots and without the intellectual curiosity. Smith tells us the dark seekers are purely evil, animalistic creatures. But we soon see they have moved beyond instinct and are showing human-level intelligence. For example, they have become protective of their fellows. They also show intelligence by using a dummy to trap Smith in an identical manner in which he trapped one of them. This shows not only a level of sophistication that denotes significant intelligence, but also that they have been observing him and planning how to handle him.

Moreover, Smith meets a young woman with a child, and we are instantly suspicious of her. Indeed, we first meet her after she saves Smith from a situation where it doesn't appear a person could have saved him, unless the creatures let her save him. She also seems too calm for someone who has survived the brutal murder of 12 million people by “fast-twitch” zombies of the type found in 28 Days Later, and has supposedly been on the run across the country. She also demonstrates a lack of cultural awareness that is highly suspicious, in that she’s never even heard of Bob Marley, nor does she recognize his music. Not to mention that her story of survival seems false.

So are you putting together the clues? Well, don’t bother. They don’t mean anything. The woman is human, and the creatures aren’t getting smarter -- or at least the filmmakers don’t care that they are. Indeed, the creatures aren’t building a new society, it’s not wrong to kill them, and Smith is nobody’s bogeyman. In fact, the only way the title makes sense is if you assume that he becomes a “legend” for saving humanity. . . oh, did I forget to mention there is a nonsensical happy ending tacked onto the movie with the woman making it to a safe city in Vermont, which sits behind a huge metal wall that puts the great wall of China to shame. How they avoided the disease is never explained, but then who cares. . . the filmmakers certainly didn’t.

By ignoring the obvious question of whether or not the creatures have become sentient to the point that it is wrong for Smith to treat them as lab subjects, the filmmakers short change the film considerably. But that’s not all that they ignore.

** The DVD has an alternate ending in the extras, in which Smith and the alpha creature reach a peace agreement, when Smith turns over the female creature he’s been experimenting on. But this ending is not integrated into the film and comes across like a sudden add-on, as if the filmmakers said, “oh yeah, we forgot to mention this, here. . . roll credits.”

Is There A God? No, um yes.

A film like I Am Legend, with its apocalyptic themes, obviously raises religious questions. Is man truly alone? Do we make our own destiny? Can we count on God to watch over us, even in such a dark hour? Or is it possible this virus represents divine judgment? This is fertile ground for filmmakers to speculate about God -- either pro or con. Yet, I Am Legend essentially tosses these issues aside, only bringing them back out of the blue for a surprise ending. It is like they banned these issues, only to reach for them when they needed an ending.

The film first mentions religion when Smith queries the woman about how she survived and how she knows about the safe city in Vermont. She explains that God protected her and advised her. Smith ridicules this idea in the type of shallow speech one would expect from a Hollywood movie with little interest in addressing questions of religion (he gives the standard “your God did this, so don’t talk to me about God” speech). The issue is then dropped entirely. . . until the very end of the film, when Smith suddenly decides to sacrifice himself to save the woman because he has an epiphany. With no prior hint to the audience, Smith connects a series of butterfly images from his daughter, from the creature he’s been testing, and from the young woman, just as the creatures break into his lab. He then hands the cure to the woman, telling her that he will die to give her a chance to escape because “I think this is why you are here” -- with the implication being that she was sent as part of a divine plan.

But this ending comes from out of the blue. The only hint the viewer has prior to Smith's epiphany that religion is an issue is Smith’s 20 second anti-religion rant half an hour before. So even though the issue of faith is technically addressed, it adds no depth to the film because it is never integrated into the story in such a way to let the audience consider its implications.

Why Would An Audience Want An Emotional Attachment?

But even leaving aside the intellectual questions, this film repeatedly misses opportunities to connect the audience to the film on an emotional level. For example, the filmmakers choose to kill Smith’s family. But they don’t make Smith face the difficult question of either watching them turn into the creatures or of killing them to save them. Instead, Smith is given the easy way out, they are killed instantly in a helicopter accident. Thus, we never connect with his personal suffering. In fact, the closest we come is when he must kill his dog Sam, which is one of the only emotional moments of the film.

Nor are we allowed to connect with the lives that were lost. The creatures retain no traces of who they were, so we cannot see ourselves in them. There are no bodies. Smith even scavenges through apartments, looking for food and medicine, but finds no real traces of people's personal lives. How can we mourn people we do not know?

The film even passes up fantastic opportunities to frighten us. For example, Smith walks with impunity through the abandoned apartments. But even worse, the filmmakers set up a fantastic pay off in a DVD store that Smith visits every day, but never make it pay off: to give his world some semblance of humanity, Smith has populated this DVD store with mannequins as if they were other shoppers. He even pretends to hit on one of the mannequins and he regularly speaks to the clerk (Fred). The sense of terror that could be generated in such an environment, if mannequins were moved or replaced by creatures, could be phenomenally powerful in pulling people into this world. You could scare people with the prospect that Smith was being stalked or even show that Smith had gone slightly insane. But nothing happens in the store. Even after the creatures use the store clerk to bait their trap, by moving it to another street -- which means they must have been watching Smith in the store -- there are no flashbacks to show us that we simply failed to observe the danger. And thus, the opportunity to get us invested in the story by giving us a sense of fear for Smith's surroundings is squandered.

Conclusion

Thus, we do not see Smith’s humanity or the humanity of the creatures, nor do we feel the need to mourn the dead, nor do we feel the need to fear the creatures unless Smith seeks them out. In effect, we are left with nothing to connect us to Smith’s world. Add to this the utter lack of intellectual curiosity of this film and we are left with a bland blockbuster that does nothing more than give us just another meaningless zombie movie. And that is a shame because this film could have been so much more.

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