Black Box

What was your budget.....$100 "This is such a beautiful experience that you don't want to miss, believe me. You'll thank me later." I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did. I won't be thanking you now and I will not be thanking you later...and there will not be a Black Box 2 in my future.

The blurb on the front declares, "nothing short of remarkable" (Movies In Focus) and "brilliant special effects" (Blazing Minds). Well, 'remarkable' is true, i suppose: it's worth remarking that this no-budget effort got made in the first place. Everything about it screams, 'made by students on work experience', from the production design to the script to the acting. The off-screen actors talk like newbies at a call centre and the lead emotes like an electrician's apprentice. The set's cobbled together from old office equipment and sticky-backed plastic, as though they got the Blue Peter team to rustle something up while the VT was rolling. If you like Hollyoaks, you'll love this. Otherwise, send it back to the charity shop you found it in. That's what i'll be doing with it. 50p wasted.

This was so bad.... so, so bad....

I mean, "Swindon Space Control"! That was really the trigger that should have told me, "Stop, don't watch this!" and also, another trigger was Marcus seeing "Erf" with Sarah telling him that it won't be long before he's safe and sound on "Erf".

Acting was cr@p, script was cr@p, the accents were shockingly humiliating, and I think that on the advert for this film, it said that the special effects were, wait for it... "brilliant"! Mmmm, what SFX?

As a Mancunian, I thought that I could be proud of a good Manchester film... however... this was embarrassingly bad. "Beam me up Scottie... off planet Erf!"

Bit of an odd duck this. This movie could very well have been a radio play without losing much of the end result. The set design (for as much as there is a set) brings back memories of high-school shop class, Lighting is hit and miss, and during the movie the main character looks blue, pink and 'human colored' every other scene. Same goes for sound, which (for the main character) goes from 'great' to ' speaking into a tin can'. The story itself is engaging enough if you can get past the rest of the movie. That story is told by exposition-style monologues from the main character, fixed dead center in your screen at all times, supplemented by forced-feeling adlibbing and further expositioning by the characters on the radio. Not all actors hide that they are reading their lines from a script very well, so the whole of the movie feels a bit homemade because of it. If you like exposition and filling in the blanks yourself, this might be for you. For the rest of us: Skip this one unless you have nothing else to watch.

The story has some intrigue and I was compelled to watch through to the end. It's TV drama sci-fi but if this movie had the budget of something like Gravity it'd be a whole different thing and more successful for it.

For a project created on a shoestring budget that wouldn't even cover a day of catering on a big budget movie, everyone involved should be commended.

It builds a decent atmosphere, and after adjusting to the accents I liked the characters. It does a decent job hinting at the history between characters without resorting to ridiculous exposition, as we see in a lot of Hollywood movies. It does feel a bit long even though it's only 90minutes, but the ending paid off for me.

But the best bit... Hearing them refer to 'Swindon Space Control'. As someone familiar with the UK Space Agency which has offices in Swindon this raised a smile and was a nice attention to detail for any Brit.