'Black Box' Review: 'Welcome to Blumhouse' film feels like 'Get Out' sans social commentary but worth a watch
Spoilers for ‘Black Box’
Part of the first couple of releases under Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Television and Amazon Studios' joint venture project titled ‘Welcome to Blumhouse’, the film ‘Black Box’ sets up an interesting premise. Like Veena Sud’s ‘The Lie’, this film directed by Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr. -- billed as a psychological horror thriller -- is essentially a tragedy.
The film follows Nolan (Mamoudou Athie), a man who suffered head trauma in an accident that also claimed the life of his wife. With little to no memory of people in his life, Nolan’s life is dependent on alarms and notes (kind of like ‘Memento’) and by his daughter Ava (Amanda Christine), a child doing her best to keep their lives going.
As personal and professional setbacks affect him, Nolan decides to go for an experimental medical treatment offered by a renowned neuropsychiatrist called Dr. Lillian Brooks (Phylicia Rashad). Brooks uses hypnosis, and a piece of tech called a Black Box, to help locate and track Nolan’s memories.
When she hypnotizes Nolan, he experiences something to fear -- as if some presence inside his subconscious was trying to get hold of him. As the sessions progress, he sees this creature more clearly. It was a man, but bent in crooked contortions, walking (or rather crawling) in a crooked manner, almost reminiscent of Kayako from ‘Ju-On’ or ‘The Grudge’. Nolan experiences memories in these sessions that don’t feel like his own. He sees a wedding that looks like nothing like his own from photos. He sees a house, a wife, and a daughter (all faceless in every memory). But they all feel familiar, yet alien.
A horror film and hypnosis, the feeling of being trapped, and existential confusion? Sounds something like Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’, right? Well, if that’s your first instinct, you aren’t wrong. Only ‘Black Box’, even with its predominantly Black cast, can only be called ‘Get out’ if we strip Peele’s film of all its social, political, and racial commentary.
Which is not to say ‘Black Box’ is a bad film. The film uses a bit of unrealistic science to get to the crux, but it works in the context. Dr. Brooks had a son called Thomas (Donald Watkins), who too had a wife and a daughter (about the same age as Ava). Thomas was an angry and abusive man. And in one of these fits of abuse, when his wife Miranda (Charmaine Bingwa) retaliated, he fell off the stairs and broke his neck and died. Dr. Brooks copied his brainwaves and waited till the day she could perfect her technology and find the right candidate. That happens two years later when Nolan is rushed into the hospital.
So, the Nolan we see in the film is only Nolan’s body, with Thomas’ consciousness implanted into it. But here’s the catch. A part of Nolan still exists, and that is the monster he’s been seeing in his sessions. The film ultimately gives the viewers a happy-ish ending. When Thomas realizes how abusive he was in his life, he decides to let go and descend into the darkness, letting Nolan take control once again. And Dr. Brooks, fired after this comes out, still has the files saved, hoping that she could one day find her son in a physical form again.
As a horror film, the scares are limited and not too convincing. But as a story, the film succeeds in being mostly fresh and gripping. Bingwa, Athie, and Christine all provide decent performances, although, for an icon like Rashad, this performance was a little too lackluster. Overall, it is an enjoyable movie that is worth watching at least once.
‘Black Box’ is available for viewing on Amazon Prime Video.
