The Box Website Goes Live: Creepy Seventies | Clothes on Film
Posted by Chris Laverty on October 10, 2009
Warner Bros’ official website for The Box starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden has gone live. This is creepy 1970s. Creepy as hell.
The Box is director Richard Kelly’s reinterpreting of a 1970 Richard Matheson short story called ‘Button, Button’ (filmed as a Twilight Zone episode in 1986). Kelly’s expanded version sees a cash strapped couple (Diaz and Marsden) left an apparently innocuous box one evening with a solitary button on top. They next day a mysterious stranger (Frank Langella) informs them that by pushing the button they will receive $1,000,000 dollars, but that somebody, somewhere will die.
And that’s it. From this point on only those that have seen the film know what happens. The Box is set in 1976 and Kelly is evidently embracing this paranoia infused period of political and technological upheaval with both arms. The website alone is enough to raise anyone’s hackles up.
Those that have seen the trailer (watch on the site and HERE) will already know that the costumes look wild; lots of ruffles, frills, clashing prints and big collars. ‘Phase 1’ of the website gives us more of the same only with spookier music, plus some nifty visual and audio effects trickery to augment the atmosphere.
Cameron Diaz in a wide-lapelled coat with Farrah Fawcett hair and a patterned silk scarf tied around her neck proves that The Box costume designer April Ferry knows a good poster image. It helps too that this style appears to suit Diaz perfectly. There is similar era intensity here to Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (1997). Maybe not 100% accurate to the time, but enhanced and glossy; this is the seventies as we want to see it.
The Box is released on 6th November (US) and 6th December (UK). Swing by the website now and prove you’re not a scaredy-cat.