Director: Mitchell Holland
Writer: Mitchell Holland
Cast: Pauline Grace, Oliver Murdoch, Mitchell Holland
Running time: 1hr 11mins
When I inflicted War of the Worlds on myself last year, I soon found that far from living up to its billing as so-bad-it’s-good moment, the The Room of its generation, it was one of the dullest experiences of my life. But even amid the critical pile-on, there was also a disquieting sense that that this wouldn’t be the last we saw of this brave new genre: the ‘man in front of his laptop thriller’.
Don’t get me wrong, starting my review of Unboxing this way shouldn’t be taken as condemning the film to the same level of panning that War of the Worlds merited. This isn’t nearly as cynical an exercise: it doesn’t come from a Hollywood exec looking to rush out cheap bilge to cash in on what “the young folks and their tik toks” are into, with as little effort as possible. It comes from a filmmaker who at the very least seems to understand the online culture he is discussing, with a possible affection for creepypastas thrown into the mix.
Beyond this, in many ways, this shows off the potential of this emergent genre of tech-centred fiction, too. It can give a talented actor a space in which they can tell a story, and build tension with only their face. It can help a writer to ratchet up tension by holding things back, while the audience finds itself sucked into every detail on the screen/screens, terrified of overlooking something that could change everything about the story. And on a practical level, it can be great for low-budget independent filmmakers looking to minimise the complexity of a shoot, and the resulting costs, as it takes place in a single location.
The thing is, the longer Unboxing goes on for, the longer it reveals that even when these fronts are handled capably, there are limitations to the format which no film can escape. And which make me really dread a world in which this becomes a mainstream mode of storytelling. First and foremost, that is that we spend long, long stretches of the film watching disconnectedly.
Film in and of itself already has a kind of uncanny frame; the edge of the picture, the corners of the screen remind us there is a kind of safety there which means we can engage with upsetting subjects which would be too much to take on directly in our lived reality. But importantly, that frame is subtle enough that we can still empathise with what is going on – even if it isn’t in first-person, we can feel as though we are directly impacted or threatened by the plot of a story. Watching a story unfold on a screen within a screen severs that connection completely, at least for me; the story loses its immediacy in a way which means even when things get gross or uncomfortable for characters, they feel just that little bit duller than they would have done.
To get away from this, Mitchell Holland does edge away from his chosen framing device in some key moments. In the film’s climax, when his hapless live-streamer Tom Faker is accosted by police agents – his broadcast of unboxing a package from the dark-web having seemingly implicated him in a missing-person case – the action moves into his living room, because a web-cam would not do justice to the unfolding intrigue or action. In this moment, it feels like the film overtly realises the issue with the feeling the extra screen leaves us feeling a little too secure, because Tom even hides behind it for a second, confident its presence can protect him. And only when his laptop suddenly runs out of battery – cutting him and us off from that safe second screen – can the horror of the conclusion commence.
As truly unnerving as that horror might be, and as great as the performance of Pauline Grace as one of the officers is in helping to unveil it, I can’t escape the feeling that I’d simply rather the whole film have been this way. If the drama can progress in an enclosed space, with a minimal number of performers, and be its most effective in the final 10 minutes, why did we have to spend the opening 15 minutes of the film watching Holland umm and ahhh as to whether he was going to open a box – while digital messages bombard us relentlessly with spam advertising NFTs, or calling him names?
And as good as Holland is in the lead role – and he has to be, because the film’s emotional core hinges on his authenticity – the placing of him so front-and-centre in this manner is an issue when it comes to believing in his performance, or empathising with it. At 35, he seems to be playing a significantly younger character, with all the grating intonations of the current crop of Twitch superstars – but the longer we dwell on that in this way, the more absurd it becomes that a grown man is behaving this way (or is still so beholden to his parents, or is so traumatised by their separation).
At the same time, this ultra-slow burn means that when a huge twist in the tale emerges, it feels rushed – and a little underdone. There is less time and space devoted to it than to the opening of a box which has a brightly painted toy fire engine in it – and I don’t feel that is something which counts in the narrative’s favour.
Holland has demonstrated real talent in many regards here, as a writer and a performer. But in the format he has chosen, he has hamstrung a project which with a little more time and space could have been a real top-tier piece of horror filmmaking. This is a better attempt at laptop horror than War of the Worlds managed – but that is a low, low bar – and still leads me to dread the idea that there will be more of this sort of thing in years to come.