The Apocalypse Box

The Apocalypse Box succeeds in creating a sense of mystery from the very beginning. The opening titles are dripping in atmosphere, showing images of a mysterious object throughout history. Aided by sinister music, the opening creates a great deal of foreboding for what the audience can assume is the eponymous box. The mystery is quickly dropped as the film introduces the main players: Piers Stonesmith (Tom Butcher), his wife Helena (Corrinne Wicks), and their political strategist Ella (Lola Knight). It’s the night before the general election, and Piers is running as party leader of a far right campaign that promises to ‘Keep Britain British’. Helena is facing a personal crisis, as she believes that her unpopularity with the British public is a potential weakness in her husband’s campaign. Meanwhile, Ella is caught in between her loyalty to the Stonesmiths and her boyfriend Jake, a political journalist with mercenary tactics. However, circumstances become much more complex when four members of the public are invited to take part in a ‘focus group’, which in reality ends up being a sort of test involving the titular Apocalypse Box. The box works like a genie or the monkey’s paw, granting wishes to the user but with ironic, or cruel twists. To operate the box, a key from a selection of many must be inserted into one of its many keyholes. If the wrong key is chosen for the wrong hole, there is a disastrous consequence outside of the room, such as a terrible traffic incident. It’s not a particularly elegant storytelling device, and the idea of the wrong key being used is quickly dropped. What makes the box feel particularly eerie are the special effects and the design of the box itself – it’s pretty convincing that this is a cursed artifact that contains unspeakable horrors within. The four strangers, Helena, Ella, and Jake are all locked in a room with the box with Piers watching remotely, and it’s not long before chaos takes over. The strangers clash over issues of politics, race, and class, and it’s all very ugly. The Apocalypse Box is having most of its fun when the evil is unleashed, and the technical effects are truly admirable. The deaths are shocking and creative, and generally speaking the performers sell the confusion and panic very well. However, the drama on either side of these moments is somewhat lacking, and it’s a shame that the political themes aren’t more centered.

The majority of The Apocalypse Box takes place in the room with the box, and it’s disappointing that the most interesting characters take a diminished role once the killing starts. Piers is absolutely written as an ambitious individual with one goal in mind, but his distance from the drama feels like a waste. Audiences may want to see how writer/director James Eaves perceives right-wing demagogues who rely on sewing division in society. Piers sits alone, passively watching the events of the film through a CCTV camera. Occasionally he gives some order to a subordinate, but it’s hardly revealing of who he is beyond being a fairly standard villain. Were he more involved in the main plot, would Piers have carelessly attempted to make a mountain of wishes, leaving in his wake a trail of bodies? Similarly, would Helena have watched with avarice and hunger in her eyes as her husband gets closer to his goals? These are compelling questions, and more interesting than asking if an unnamed member of the public would wish for fame as we have seen a hundred times before in other similar fictional scenarios. The political satire gets a little lost in the horror, and it could have been pushed much further. We ask similar questions in Britain today, as politicians across various parties exploit the suffering of thousands for their own gain. It would have been bold for one of the characters to have made a wish using the box, and to see that the result was something more recognisable to the audience, such as a boat full of refugees capsizing in the channel. Grasping political power in modern day Britain often comes with inhumane choices and tradeoffs; how much money have some members of Labour’s cabinet made as a result of choices made to keep children in poverty or to sell arms to genocidal states? The Apocalypse Box fails in making as biting a political statement as it could have, and it ends up being a fairly entertaining albeit disposable horror flick.