Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with a Slate spoiler special podcast'm going to throw the plot exposition to him. This is going to be, I should warn you, a very spoilery podcast.

So if you're going to see the box and you don't want all of the mini-twist spoiled, wait until after you've seen it.

And it's also going to be a very plot-heavy podcast because this is sort of like a twin peaks length plot jammed into a two-hour movie.

It definitely, it definitely is. In the trailer, they do a good job of making it seem like it's such a simple premise. And then at a certain point in the movie,

it just kind of spirals into a convoluted place that I'm not sure that we can even figure

out in the spoiler podcast, even though we're willing to sort of talk about all the details,

because it's just really confusing. It's also almost a question how much of that is intentional and whether the plot holes are things that, you know, we get to be smart asses by pointing out or whether there are things that Richard Kelly, the director and writer of the movie tried to build into the plot.

So we can talk about that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't know if you went back and watched it two or three times whether you could fill in those holes.

I suspect not. I don't want to go back and watch it two or three times, though, myself. But the premise, I mean, in the trailer and sort of in the

first half an hour of the movie or so, is it actually gem-like in its simplicity, and I think

is a great premise. We should also mention that it's based on a short story, kind of fantasy short

story by Richard Matheson. That's right. Yeah. And it was apparently adapted into a Twilight Zone episode, which I'm looking forward to watching later this afternoon as part of my research for this review.

But, yeah, the basic plot is kind of great.

It's sort of like a classic, you know, late night in the dorm room with your, you know, Philosophy 101 text and maybe a bag of marijuana or at least a bag of

Pepperidge Farm Milano's or something, and you and your roommate are tossing around bizarre

scenarios, what would you do kind of thing. So this, it's set in this 1776 and there's sort of

nice couple. They live in Richmond, Virginia, wake up one morning to find a parcel on their

doorstep. And in the

parcel is this strange device that's essentially like a wooden box with a button on top. And later

that day, a sort of mysterious man shows up and introduces himself as Arlington steward.

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