Monday, November 9, 2009

Mockery, vol II

Hollywood lives (and dies) on a willing suspension of disbelief by their audience. The audience has to buy in to the basic premise of the film, or it will be a long 90 minutes. And high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Box looks to me like it will have this problem. The premise is idiotic: someone cares enough about your sick kid to offer you a pile of dough sufficient to cure him, but only if someone else dies.



What's most idiotic is that someone would think twice about pushing the button - at least, I wouldn't. So where's the dramatic tension? I dunno - maybe this is a comedy? It's certainly a rich target for mockery:

2 comments:

  1. wolfwalkerNovember 9, 2009 at 8:35 AM

    The premise is idiotic: someone cares enough about your sick kid to offer you a pile of dough sufficient to cure him, but only if someone else dies.

    Gotta be more to it than that. This is the setup for a classic Monkey's Paw story. There are many ways to make it interesting, but they all involve some connection between you and the person who dies.

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  2. ASM826November 9, 2009 at 1:37 PM

    Yea, here's the payoff: You push the button, they come and take the box and give to someone else. When they push the button, you die. They are killing, in turn, each person who pushes it when the next person pushes it.

    It's an old Twilight Zone episode.

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