Black Box - Amazing Sci-Fi Horror
So, I am a big fan of the stuff that Blumhouse Television does, each month I would wait patiently for their Hulu Into the Dark entry to be released all the while quietly cursing them because Hulu doesn’t exist in Canada. The series had some hits and misses like all series do, but some of the hits ended up being some of my favorite horror films of the past few years (please see Pilgrim and My Valentine). Needless to say I was thrilled to see that Blumhouse had a new anthology series releasing on Amazon called Welcome to the Blumhouse. The trailers were released for the films and they each appeared to be a little more polished and sophisticated than the Hulu films. There would certainly be no killer stuffed animals, killer dogs or cannibalistic thanksgiving dinners. Simply put, I was excited for these films. The best of the bunch was by far Black Box.
Black Box follows Nolan (Mamoudou Athie) as a single father trying to piece his life back together after a horrific car accident took his wife and all of his memories. Unable to keep a job and with the threat of child protective services coming to take his daughter away from him, Nolan visits Dr. Lilian Brooks (Phylicia Rashad) for an experimental treatment to restore his memory and bring some stability to his life. The treatment is this weird mix of hypnosis and virtual reality that transports Nolan into his subconscious where he has a wristwatch that allows him to travel through time in an attempt to revisit his memories. He first travels to his wedding day where all the minute details are there except no one has a face and there is an uninvited guest. No, I’m not talking about a drunk uncle who wants to hear freebird, I’m talking about a bone crackling, twisted up man creature who tries to strangle Nolan. At first, Nolan is troubled by all this but as he begins to remember his favorite sushi restaurant he decides to continue with the treatment.
The next time he goes in he has a memory that doesn’t make much sense to him. He’s in an apartment he doesn’t remember living in and it looks like he beat his wife. He begins to become nervous that he is some sort of bad person so he asks his good friend if he ever lived in an apartment or if he beat his wife. His friend tries to ease his mind but Nolan wants to get to the truth. He goes into the hypnosis\virtual reality thing one more time and focuses on seeing the faces while the monster pursues him through his subconscious. Finally the visions start to become clear, the wedding was not his, the beaten wife was not his wife, the face in the mirror is not his, these are not his memories, they are the memories of Thomas, Dr. Brooks’ son who died the same day that comatose Nolan came to the hospital and Dr. Brooks uploaded his consciousness into Nolan’s body.
Whoa.
They always say that people fear what they don’t understand, and two huge things that we as a species don’t really understand is technology and the realm of human consciousness. I work in technology but I literally have no idea how my brother’s Alexa listens to everything we say and sends it to a NSA agent who is flagging us for our convos (Hi Steve!...We named him, he’s Steve). I’ve explored all sorts of hippy dippy bullshit man, trying to figure out like, what it all means man but nobody knows. So is it entirely possible that Phylicia Rashad could download her sons brainscan data, the essences of his soul and consciousness and upload it into another man’s body with some weird virtual reality hypnosis machine? Who knows! Does the film explain exactly how all this happens? Not at all, and that my friends is what makes this movie so good.
I have a lot of gripes with modern cinema. Too much CGI, no appreciation for silence and too much explaining. It seems like any movie that has a complex or complicated plot has to stop somewhere around the third act to do some sort of montage flashback to connect all the dots for you. The worst is when one of the characters basically looks into the screen and gives you a dissertation of everything going on like you are some sort of wee baby. I ain’t no goddamn baby, and I don’t need my hand held. Older films were like “Voila! Figure it out” and you, the viewer, could create the story in your mind filling in the blanks the creative team left out. It’s beautiful and Black Box does exactly that. They don’t explain the technology for the consciousness transfer, they don’t detail the implications of this, in fact, Thomas, in Nolan’s body goes to visit his widowed wife to explain he’s back from the dead. When she says, “But...but how?” he says, “I...I don’t really know” and they never mention the technology again, they just continue with what really matters. The story. The horror. The bone crackling demon man in Thoma’s subconscious which is really Nolan trying to take over his body back from the body snatcher!
Black Box is an amazing sci-fi horror film. Many people will say it’s like a Black Mirror episode but come on, let that British thing be its own British thing on Netflix, let Black Box stand on its own. Although, being honest, give Nolan a British accent and it’s like season 5 of that show for sure. Unlike the Into the Dark series, this one is on Amazon so Canada can watch it too so check it out now!
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