Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Black Box’ on Amazon Prime, a Freaky Blumhouse Flick About a Man and His Lost Memories

Black Box is one among four new scary-season films debuting on Amazon Prime this month lumped under the Welcome to the Blumhouse banner. Y’all know horror mainstay Blumhouse as the production company bankrolling everything from Paranormal Activity to Paranormal Activity 2, from Paranormal Activity 3 and Paranormal Activity 4 — and also non-Paranormal fare like Get Out and The Invisible Man. Point being, it’s a logo representing silly cheapo stuff AND wily knockout thrillers, so be thankful we’re here to tell you which is what.

BLACK BOX: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Six months ago, the odds were not in Nolan’s (Mamoudou Athie) favor. He was in a car wreck that killed his wife and left him brain dead — until he inexplicably recovered. “An anomaly” reads his medical record. Now, he’s an amnesiac, and daughter Ava (Amanda Christine), who’s maybe nine or 10 and very precocious, is his de-facto caretaker, helping him remember things, making dinner, etc. He’s a photographer, but the newspaper where he was employed doesn’t think his work is up to snuff anymore. He’s lost.

Nolan visits his doctor pal Gary (Tosin Morohunfola), who works down the hall from the neuroscientist who’s been courting him for experimental treatment, Dr. Lillian (Phylicia Rashad). She promptly hypnotizes him until he’s in a place that’s a lot like the sunken place, except it’s also sort of a spotless mind. Next thing you know, she straps him into a chair and oversized VR goggles, which will help him plumb the depths of his subconscious for his old lost memories. They’ll be exactly how they’re supposed to be, Lillian says. Except the memory of his wedding is in a church, then he goes home and looks at photos of his outdoor wedding, and now two plus two equals… not four.

His hallucination-dream-memories are full of people who say nothing and whose faces are blurred. That’s just a thing called prosopagnosia, Lillian says. Neat! One of those people is a man bent and folded in all manner of unnatural ways, scuttling around like a crab and making those crackly-bone sounds you hear in horror movies, you know, the sound of your rotisserie bird being crunched under the wheel of your Celica. Lillian keeps pushing him to go deeper and deeper, and not to let Mr. Cracklybones intimidate him. There are rules, of course. She tells him not to go out the door of the room he finds himself in when he’s in there, but doesn’t say anything about not getting wet or eating after midnight. Should he trust her? Of course he should — she’s Phylicia Rashad, not some mad scientist, right? NOOOOOOOO SPOILERRRRRRRRRRRRRRS!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Get Out and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are references, and my hope that Nolan would bump into Bing Bong somewhere in his subconscious went unfulfilled.

Performance Worth Watching: Athie gives a fine central performance here, although as his character gets more complex, the movie itself only gets dumber.

Memorable Dialogue: Decontextualized for greater comedic impact: “I died. And now I’m here.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Enough of the bone crackin’ fever, horror movies. Enough already, sound designers. So many crackity crackity bones. It’s like someone fell into a “But that’s not the shark-jumping!” moment in Black Box. No, that happens when we suss out the twist three or four story beats before it happens, which is early in the game, allowing us to realize there’s another twist coming down the pipe. You’ll probably see that one coming, too. The plot just doesn’t hold its H2O long enough.

Granted, movies needn’t outsmart us to be entertaining. But this one emphasizes its twist, short-shrifting us on theme, character and dramatic oomph. It begins as a compelling mystery rooted in a man’s trauma, and ties in a statement about domestic violence, then pushes aside any substantial content as it deteriorates into high-concept hogwash. It’s not about anything but its own vaguely clever twists, and devolves into a blend of poker-faced horror and preposterous, overwrought Tyler Perryisms. You’ll giggle a little as this riff on the sunken place sinks into silliness.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Black Box is like a cardboard box in the rain — starts off sturdy but slowly falls apart.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Black Box on Amazon Prime