Four Boxes

This movie's plot twists pretty much require a second viewing to fully understand what went on - every half hour or so you realize what you thought you were watching wasn't what it seemed, and you have to rewrite your initial impressions as you go. Kind of brilliant. The script was smart, snarky, funny, the plot was thoroughly engrossing, and the precise art direction (for all its greyness) made even the brief little details visually and emotionally compelling - the kind of details most low-budget independents can't muster. True, not everything gets explained in the end, but do you really want it to be? Personally, I like a little "What the hell was that?!" from my movies, and this movie delivers. I wouldn't exactly label it a "thriller," as its pacing and interests seem to extend beyond that, but it is definitely suspenseful. An undercurrent of social commentary tugs at Four Boxes throughout - the characters seem adrift in the banalities of suburbia, and their search for success and a pathway out is both believable and a little sickening. Overall, kinda icky, kinda great.

I was very excited upon starting this movie, because Justin Kirk from weeds is in it, and to me, that meant that the movie would be good, or at least watchable. it wasn't. the story was not very well thought out, the characters were annoying, and the story went nowhere. the ending leaves you unsatisfied, and all you can think about is how much better the movie would have been with a different writer, a different director, and different script. Justin Kirk was the ONLY good thing about this movie, because he's so awesome on weeds, and always inventive and comedic in his scenes, but his talent was wasted on this excuse for a movie. Very sad.

I was expecting to hate this, especially as it started with low contrast shots, typos on the title cards, etc. I really thought it may be one of those films you watch whilst you're doing something else, so I kept half an eye on it. I really wasn't engaging a lot, doing other stuff, then there was a change of pace (when the film matched the DVD box genre), then another one again (when it went further off-piste). It got my attention.

6*'s - we're in the 4-5's for the first hour or so, but we get to a 7, maybe 7.5 for some inventive thinking and the meta-ness of the film. The first hour is fine to half-watch if you've got other stuff on too.

This film has been touted by some as this year's "Paranormal Activity", or even as "Rear Window on the Internet". It has potential, but just doesn't deliver. When it started I felt as if we might be in 21st-century "Videodrome" territory, but my hopes were quickly dashed. There are numerous plot holes, and the ending feels unsatisfying. The characters are very annoying in their speech and mannerisms and it is difficult to feel any sympathy for them. The younger of the two guys reminds me very much of the douche in "Paranormal Activity", and the girl reminds me of every artsy chick I've ever met in the sense that she feels that the universe owes her something even when she lacks talent. Notice the one scene where she strums the strings one after the other without playing any chords, and the cutaway to the older guy's face as his heartstrings are obviously being strummed in unison... And- all the misspellings in the opening credits don't help either. Don't waste your time.

Four Boxes requires a lot of patience, but it's well worth the investment of your time. A little less than an hour into this film, I was sitting here asking myself - not for the first time - why I was watching such a boring and pointless movie. Then, all of a sudden, everything changed, and Four Boxes reached right out and grabbed me. In just a few shocking seconds of revelation, the filmmakers press all of the buttons for suspense and horror. It's instant brilliance, in my opinion. Then, having cinematically punched you in the face, the filmmakers follow that up with another surprising slap across the chops that completely re-frames what you just saw. Then, determined not to fall back on any conventionality, these guys deliver a decidedly weird and unexpected ending. There's more originality and daring filmmaking in this low budget, independent film's final twenty-five minutes than you could possibly scrape up across all of Hollywood.

The first two thirds of this movie seems like an exercise in futility about three characters living lives of quiet desperation. Trevor Grainger (Justin Kirk) and Rob Rankus (Sam Rosen) are two exceedingly average guys who supplement their incomes by acquiring the possessions of dead loners and selling them on EBAY. As they temporarily move in to clean out the house of the late Bill Zill, they're joined by Amber Croft (Terryn Westbrook), a girl who used to date Trevor but is now engaged to Rob. Apart from some love triangle friction, there isn't much going on here at all. Zill was apparently a pretty weird dude, though, who seemingly left behind some cryptic clues about something. For the most part, though, our characters spend a lot of time watching this little web site Rob discovered called Four Boxes. As he explains it, the site began with a woman broadcasting live video feeds from four different rooms in her home; then she moved out, leaving the cameras in place. The new tenant, a seriously weird dude the friends nickname "Havoc," apparently has no idea that his personal life is being broadcast all over the Internet. He sleeps in a bat-cage, frequently dons a gas mask, and seems to be making more than a few bombs. The question our characters face is whether or not what they are seeing is actually real and, if so, what - if anything - they should do about it. All of that just serves to set up the real meat of the story, though - and I'm not going to give anything away as far as that is concerned.

Some people are going to give up on this movie before it delivers its impressive payload. The characters are rather pathetic, uninteresting, and downright depressing, making it hard to care what might happen to any of them. You may think you're watching the worst movie ever made, but I'm telling you to hang in there. When the you-know-what hits the fan, you're going to want to be there. Four Boxes - made for a mere forty thousand dollars, is billed as "part thriller, part dark comedy, part social satire" - and, in the end, it is all of that and more.