‘The Box’ Review: A Dark Coming

Advertisement

Supported by

Critic's Pick

This unsettlingly cryptic thriller directed by Lorenzo Vigas follows a teenager after he retrieves the remains of his father who was found in a mass grave.

By Beatrice Loayza

When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

The Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas's "The Box" weaves some of the greatest horrors of modern Mexican life into an unsettlingly cryptic thriller.

Hatzín (newcomer Hatzín Navarrete), a reticent teenager with melancholic eyes, takes a journey by bus to the north of Mexico to retrieve the remains of the father he never knew. When he arrives, he's unceremoniously given a tin box. In it is his dad, one of dozens of people found in a clandestine mass grave — a not uncommon phenomenon in this part of the country, where gang members often dispose of their dirty business.

When Hatzín sees a man on the street who closely resembles a photograph of his father, Hatzín promptly surrenders the box. There's been a mistake. He tracks down the man, Mario (Hernán Mendoza), and insists he's his son, following him until Mario accepts him into his life, or, rather, his business.

Mario is a contractor of sorts who hires cheap laborers and transports them to nearby factories, where they’re encouraged to make products "nicer and faster" than their Chinese competitors.

Hatzín is quick; he immediately realizes that the workers are being scammed, and, good with numbers, he helps Mario with some of his accounting. He intuits that Mario is hiding something — perhaps a dark past that caused him to abandon Hatzín and his mother. The film creeps in distressing and unexpected directions as Hatzín investigates the whereabouts of a missing worker. Eventually, the distorting effects of the teen's own absent-father trauma makes us question Mario's intentions.

Filled with static widescreen shots that bolster the mystery of the desert landscape, the film is a gloomy slow-burn with hints of neowestern malaise à la the Coen brothers. It's rich with subtle commentary about the exploitation and disappearance of industrial workers, particularly women, and an identity crisis central to Mexican history, and it delivers these lessons in the mode of a coming-of-age story—a very dark one, indeed.

The BoxNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes. Watch on Mubi.

When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

Movie data powered by IMDb.com

Advertisement