The Box

So last week (wait, last week? Man, that seems ages ago) I went out with my supafriend Heather for her 18 birthday (I kidd, she just seems like a wee baby to me though). We met at a delish Mexican restaurante and ate yummy food. Her pick for the activity of the night was to see The Box. So here is my little review....

The Box first of all, has that cute guy James Marsden and the iffy Cameron Diaz (the iffy part will be explained another time). I had read the short story Button, Button a coupla years ago. It was published in the 1970's by Richard Matheson, he later also wrote the very popular Twilight Zone episode based on the same short story. A great little gem of a story that you should find and read.

But back to the movie...

The movie opens on a family: mom who is a teacher at a private school, dad works at NASA and a son attends said private school. Money is tight, and yet the dad has a brand new sports car?! The mom has half of her foot missing which causes her to limp and later points are made on said half-foot. She soon finds out the money is going to get a lot tighter...What will they do?

And The Box shows up. Unannounced and unexplained. Soon a man with HALF HIS FACE MISSING shows up and the mom welcomes him in...Yea, this is where it veers away from reality, What women alone at home would invite a stranger this scary into their home?

He explains the box: push the button and someone somewhere, that she doesn't know, will die. If she pushes the button she will receive one million dollars. She can't tell anyone but her husband about the man or the box. He will pick up the box at the same time tomorrow.

So the rest of the movie completely veers from anything in the short story. It was entertaining to watch, some great jump-in-your-seat moments too. And lots of creepy people staring dumbly at the main characters (which later haunted my dreams).

There was A LOT that I didn't understand...I looked to my friends for explantation but they had none. I left feeling confused and a little wigged out.

So it wasn't the best movie, it wasn't the worst. And it strayed from the book a great deal. But it might be worth seeing on DVD...