Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a Drama,
Mystery, Thriller film from 2009, titled The Box. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
In July 1976, the NSA Deputy Director receives an incredibly important memorandum from NASA's
Mars project, confirming they were able to resuscitate patient Arlington Steward, who's
been released from the burn unit and taken to an undisclosed location. Since then, the patient
has constructed a device of unknown purpose and has been delivering it to private residences.
Five months later, in Virginia, Arthur and Norma Lewis are woken up at almost 6 am by the doorbell.
By the time Norma makes it to the door, she gets to see a black car leaving and finds a
plain box at their porch. They decide to open it while having breakfast with their son Walter
and inside they find a wooden box with a button on it that can only be accessed through a key.
There's also an envelope with a note that says Mr. Steward will call them at 5 pm, but they don't
know anyone with that name. The family leaves for the day then. Walter goes to school, and
Norma goes to her teaching job, where her student Charles asks her why she limps and to show them
her foot. Seeing as she is being called out in front of the class, Norma takes off her boot and
sock and shows everyone how deformed her foot is. Afterward, she's summoned by the school principal,
who tells her they will no longer provide the faculty discount for her son's tuition as his
nose starts bleeding. This news greatly distresses her, because her family is already living paycheck
to paycheck. Arthur, meanwhile, goes to his job at NASA. After watching a press conference about
what the spacecraft Viking 1 found on Mars, for which he designed the camera, he goes to the labs,
where he continues to work on a prosthesis for Norma's foot. He's suddenly interrupted by one of
his bosses, Norm Cahill, who brings him a letter with the results of his astronaut application:
he's been rejected because he hasn't passed the psychological exam. Everyone thinks this is rather
strange. When Norma returns home, she receives a visit from a man with the side of his face burned:
it's Mr. Steward, who is here to explain the purpose of the box. He hands her the key that
opens the lid that covers the button and says that if Norma presses it, two things will happen:
someone in the world they don't know will die, and she will get one million dollars,
tax-free in cash. As proof of his intentions, he gifts her a one hundred dollar bill before
detailing the rules: he isn't allowed to disclose any information about the identity
of his employers, Norma isn't allowed to discuss the details of this with anyone except Arthur,
and she has twenty-four hours to make her decision. At five pm the next day,
Steward will come to pick up the box, which will be reprogrammed and taken to a new family.
Before Norma can ask any more questions though, Steward just gets in his car and leaves.
Some hours later, Arthur returns home and after the couple shares their bad news with each other,
Norma tells him about Steward and the box. Unable to agree on what to do, they leave the
box in their safe before leaving for the theatre while Walter stays with his babysitter, Dana. But
even at the theatre, they can't stop thinking and discussing the box, unaware someone is watching
them. So when they return home, they grab the box and inspect it more closely, until Arthur manages
to open its base and discovers it's empty inside, which makes them wonder how could someone know
if the button gets pressed at all. If they don't decide quickly and solve their financial problems,
Norma will have to cancel her foot surgery. The next day, one of Arthur's coworkers,
Jeffrey Carnes, receives a call from his wife to tell him she saw a woman being kidnapped while
she was in the grocery store. Jeffrey tells her to go home and lock all the doors, unaware he is
being watched from afar by the same person that has been following Arthur and Norma. After work,
Arthur takes the one hundred dollar bill back to Norma and informs her the tests he's run confirm
the bill is real, so after some discussion, Norma goes ahead and pushes the button.
In another part of the city, the cops arrive at a house after the neighbor called 911 to report
some screaming and a gunshot, they find a dead woman and a little girl locked in the bathroom.
Moments later, Steward visits the Lewis and gives them a suitcase with the million dollars
before leaving with the box, which he'll take to a new person they don't know. Arthur follows him
to the car and tries to give him the suitcase back, but Steward ignores him and drives away.
The couple gets to see his license plate though, and they write it down.
At the police station, Norma's father, Dick Burns, is working on the dead woman's case.
They find out she's Jeffrey's wife, but Jeffrey himself is nowhere to be found, although some
witnesses saw him run out of the house after the gun was shot. Later that night, Arthur gives Norma
the prosthesis he's made, which fits her perfectly and allows her to walk without pain or limping.
Afterward, they go to the rehearsal dinner of Norma's sister's wedding, where Charles is working
as a waiter. Norma's parents are raffling the donated gifts for the holiday season,
and the first winner is Arthur, who chooses the plain brown box, which looks like the one
Steward left them, after Charles flashes him the peace sign. He takes it with him to the table and
opens it with Norma, finding inside a picture of Steward from when he still had his whole face.
Moments later, while having a drink with Charles, Arthur gives him Steward's
license plate number so he can use his police resources to find out who this man really is.
He also cannot help noticing how Charles keeps on watching him so he asks another guest about him,
getting upset when he hears this kid embarrassed his wife in front of the class.
Meanwhile, a waiter with a bleeding nose tells Norma she has a phone call. It's Steward,
who tells her there will be consequences for having asked the police about his car.
After hanging up, Norma rushes out of the room when she hears some noises outside: it's Arthur,
who is aggressively confronting Charles for what he said to his wife. Not wanting to make a scene,
she pulls him away and asks him to go home, but when they get in the car, they find the words "no
exit" written on their window and Charles flashing the peace sign at them again. Back in the house,
Dana is doing her best to entertain Walter while ignoring the shadows outside the window,
and they both fall asleep by the time his parents come back. Arthur offers to drive her to her
place, and she tells him she's staying in a motel before she starts making cryptic comments that
suggest she may know what he's going through. When Arthur asks her for advice, she responds "to look
into the light" then passes out with a bleeding nose. Trying to find some information to help her,
Arthur looks inside her bag and finds an ID that says her name is actually "Sarah Matthews", which
he puts away in his pocket as Dana wakes up and starts freaking out, telling him he needs to leave
because it's not safe for him there. When she enters the motel, every guest comes out to stare
at her as she makes her way to her room, where she keeps a big board with a map and pictures of the
Lewis family. The guests then go to the motel pool to stare at the water. Arthur returns to
Norma and tells her Dana has lied about her name and the place she's from, and Norma explains this
is what Steward probably meant when he said he has "employees" that can tell him what they do.
While looking at Steward's picture, Arthur realizes he's seen him before and rushes
to look at a poster of the first Viking trip to Mars: Steward is there as one of the workers of
the mission. The next day, Steward calls Norma to warn her about possible consequences again.
Norma asks him to meet in person and when Steward tells him he's in his backyard,
Norma notices a random man outside, staring at her with his mouth open. Steward hangs up on her at
his hidden office behind NASA's wind tunnels. One of the NSA employees goes to see the NASA bosses
to demand even more things, this time asking for the hangar and the lunar lander for activities he
isn't allowed to explain but that will involve NASA employees. Cahill isn't happy with this,
but he has no choice but to accept. Arthur visits Dick at the police station to see if
he has any news about the license plate, which turns out belongs to an NSA car. When Arthur
sees the pictures of Jeffrey's wife and hears she died at the same time they pressed the button,
he asks Dick to take him to the crime scene. At Jeffrey's house, Arthur finds a picture of Steward
and something called "Human Resource Exploitation Manual" with some numbers under it, so he steals
the picture for himself while Dick isn't looking. Meanwhile, Norma is shopping with his mother when
a woman approaches her and tells her the NSA is letting "him" do it, that NASA can't stop him,
and that the subjects are all under 40, happily married with a child. The woman also gives her
a note with a number that Norma should follow when going to the Richmond Library and tells her
not to trust anyone, not even her husband, before passing out with a bleeding nose. Both Norma and
Arthur go to the library to see where the numbers they got take them. Norma finds a recording of the
NASA hangar and the damage caused by the lightning that struck months ago, there's also a clip of a
NASA press conference Steward attended before the tragedy. After watching the whole video,
Norma is guided by two women to where Steward is waiting for her for a chat. He tells her that
since he got struck by lightning, he's been in communication with those that control it, he also
wants to know what Norma felt the first time she saw his face, because he thinks it probably was
pity. Norma's answer, however, is love, because she knew how much pain disfigurement could cause
in someone's life, but at least she could keep her hidden, while he had to carry his on his exposed
face. After seeing him, Norma would never feel sorry for herself again. Surprised by her words,
Steward asks her to take his hand, and when she does, she falls unconscious. Arthur finds a book
about lightning and a newspaper article about the time a NASA employee got struck by lightning,
and as he leaves the room with it, he starts being followed by a group of library guests.
He tries to leave through the reading room, but the people there also stand up to look at him,
and his way is blocked by Steward's wife, Clymene, who tells him the library is for employees only
and that they are all being tested. Then she takes him to another room where three gateways await on
the floor - Arthur must choose carefully because only one is the path to salvation and the other
two take you to eternal damnation. Clymene extends her hand and starts bleeding as she activates the
gateways, which become three columns of water, and Arthur doesn't hesitate to choose number two as he
remembers what Charles signed to him during the party. As soon as he touches the gateway, Arthur
is absorbed by white light and, moments later, he and the water show up in his room, floating above
a sleeping Norma, who wakes up right before her husband and the water fall on the bed with her.
Walter comes to check on them and while cleaning, he tells Norma that last night she arrived home
while looking like a zombie and didn't say anything, just went straight to bed. Meanwhile,
Cahill secretly meets with the NSA employee, who tells him Steward got hit by lightning five
months ago and the reason why NASA never heard of him again is that he's something else now.
He died after the accident, but several hours after he was taken to the morgue and locked
in a freezer, a nurse heard him laugh, so he was transferred to a high-security military hospital.
Since then, he has been demonstrating some extraordinary capabilities, like healing
faster and halted cellular deterioration. Unknown to them, Steward hears the whole conversation.
Later, when asked by the NSA employee why he chose a box, he explains that homes, cars,
and TVs are boxes, and they all erode the soul and the body, which is also a box that when it dies,
is put in yet another box. Steward's tests can be passed by not pressing the button,
and these tests will be what will help his employers decide the fate of humanity.
Nearby, all employees like Dana are being guided into a white light to prepare for another test in
Massachusetts Later at night, the Lewis family goes to Norma's sister's weddings, and while
dancing, Arthur describes the light to Norma as "a warm embrace, not here or there, but something in
between, with no despair in the human heart". As always, they're being followed by Steward's men,
but when Arthur starts feeling sick and goes outside, it isn't an employee that gets in
his way: it's Jeffrey. Threatening him with a gun, Jeffrey tells him it's too late for him but Arthur
can still save himself and gets him in the truck with him. Walter and Norma, noticing he's missing,
try to go after him, but a group of men arrive and kidnap them both. In the truck, Jeffrey shows
Arthur some classified documents that said people with frontal lobe hemorrhage cannot be treated as
employees - this is Steward's weakness, he hasn't found a way to get into people's minds without
them noticing. He has all important agencies like the FBI under his control, but he can be
killed. They've taken Arthur's son to the motel the same way they took Jeffrey's daughter, and
he's being lowered into the pool, which is another gateway. Jeffrey had to kill his own wife for the
sake of his daughter, who went through the same thing and Steward made him choose between them.
The truck comes to a stop when they find a man dressed a Santa Claus blocking the road,
and they're suddenly hit by another vehicle, revealing Santa to be one of the employees.
When the police arrive, however, they only find Jeffrey's body inside the truck.
Arthur suddenly finds himself leaving a NASA hangar, and waiting there for him is Cahill, who
tells him whatever he does next will have greater ramifications than he can possibly imagine.
Arthur and Norma are taken back to their home, where Steward is waiting for them with a final
test. He's locked Walter in the bathroom after he's been stricken blind and deaf,
and now his parents must choose between two options: living the rest of their lives enjoying
their money and dealing with a disabled son, or Arthur can kill Norma, which will give Walter his
senses back and the money will be put into an account he can access when he turns eighteen.
Furious, Arthur grabs the gun Steward has given them for the test and points it at his head,
but Steward explains it's pointless: killing him will only put Arthur in prison under a story
nobody will buy and someone else will be sent to replace him. After Steward leaves, the couple
rushes to the bathroom, but it's locked and they don't dare to kick the door down because Walter is
on the other side, unable to hear them and move away. Norma decides that she can't see Walter
like this, so she asks Arthur to shoot her. After kissing passionately, Arthur pulls the trigger,
and Norma dies at the same time another couple in the neighborhood pushes the button on the box.
Arthur returns to the bathroom door to talk to his son, but he only gets to hear him call out for him
before the cops arrive and take him away. Instead of being sent away in a police car, however,
he's put inside the NSA's black car, and Cahill tells Arthur not to worry because he'll take good
care of Walter, who is now looking at him through the window with his recovered senses. Meanwhile,
Stewards retrieves the box from the other family's house, ready to hand it out to someone new.