Oct 6

Oct 6 'Black Box' film review: Unsettling deep dive into identity and the subconscious

If 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' and 'Inception' had a nightmarish child, it would be filmmaker Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour's sci-fi psychological horror flick 'Black Box' (streams on Amazon Prime Video starting Oct. 6 as part of the Welcome to the Blumhouse anthology).

In short: After the loss of his wife and his memory, news photographer Nolan Wright (Mamoudou Athie) undergoes in an experimental treatment that could reverse his condition. Amanda Christine, Tosin Morohunfola and Phylicia Rashad also star.

Great sci-fi doesn't get mired in the science - it simply uses the convention to tap into more universal and fundamental human truths. And 'Black Box' has one foot in a man's grief-stricken reality and the darker undercurrent of his subconscious. Real-world Nolan lives struggles to maintain a daily routine as he's unable to remember anything about his life before his brain injury. Meanwhile, subconscious Nolan is compelled to regain his memories - but the troubling memories he discovers aren’t nearly as disturbing as the nightmare pursuing him in his memories.

Osei-Kuffour's feature debut plays like a mystery, with the audience as in the dark about Nolan's past as he is. The film just drops the audience into the story - throwing the audience off-balance from the very start. The unimaginable tragedy of losing everything is so unthinkable that 'Black Box' becomes instantly credible the moment it allows the audience to feel Nolan's disconnect and his loss.

Athie is simply stirring as the tentative Nolan, a man nervously walking through life as if he's wearing another man's skin. He's earnestly trying to reconcile his upended life with a life he simply cannot connect with at all. 'Black Box' lives in the disconnection between these two disparate lives that Nolan leads - and his desperation to bridge that gap.

Going into the third act, 'Black Box' takes a pretty sharp sci-fi turn. Frankly, it's a revelation that is so incredibly jarring that it, for a time, elevates the sci-fi elements above the character-focused elements. The first half is a compelling character study of a man pushed to the darkest parts of his mind, driven by the pure desperation to reclaim a life for him and his family. Most of the third act is less character-rooted than it is plot-device driven. Thankfully, in the end 'Black Box' elegantly finds a way to balance innovative storytelling and compelling character-driven drama.

Final verdict: 'Black Box' is a wildly creative work of science fiction, rooted in a story of people frozen in their lives, trying to find a way forward.