The director who had alternative high school kids cry and identify with Donnie Darko, though we—sorry, they—probably don't understand the plot, is back. The trailer is out for the new Richard Kelly movie The Box. When the movie was in early stages of production, it seemed like The Box was going to be Kelly's mainstream atonement for his wildly (and most would say disastrously) abstruse Southland Tales. From the trippy trailer with Frank Langella's mangled face, cackling housemaids and crazy water, it seems like The Box may be a starkly independent and difficult picture.
The critical hoarde that so obstreperously shot down Southland Tales is no doubt ready to bring out the heavy artiliery for The Box if the two movies are similar, which is unfortunate. Southland outdoubtedly had egregious flaws--the glib poetic references and irritating and unnecessary tangle of abstrusity, for starters—but is was still an excellent film, an intended jokey pastiche most mistook for seriousness. The film's casting alone was an impressive (and funny) postdmodern experiment. The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz and Seann William Scott—mainstream actors of our day—jumbled into a bizarre and (at least striving to be) intellectual storyline. If anything, Kelly deserved credit for trying.
So bravo, Kelly, for keeping it weird in The Box.
