COOL STUFF

You Are the Experiment: Richard Kelly's The Box Has a Viral

by Alex Billington
October 29, 2009

If you've seen any of the TV spots for Richard Kelly's The Box, they all include the phrase "You are the experiment." What does it mean? Well, we're not entirely sure yet, but a new viral website has popped up: youaretheexperiment.com. Warner Bros is obviously not trying to cover it up (their info is at the bottom, as is a link to buy tickets), but it does have some interesting videos labeled Exhibit A, B, and C. If you watch the three of them, you'll notice that they are all about NASA's Viking program from the 1970's where they sent two space probes to Mars. What does Mars have to do with The Box? Another answer we don't know yet.

Beyond getting a sense of the 70's look that Richard Kelly is going for and hearing some of the score, I think there's something to be uncovered in these videos, hence why they're all labeled as Exhibits, like evidence in an ongoing investigation. But what does Mars have to do with The Box? Well, we already know that James Marsden's character Arthur Lewis works at NASA and from the trailer we know that he loses his job. But this movie is supposed to be about a mysterious guy who delivers a box to the Lewis family with a button that when pressed gives them a million dollars but kills someone else in the world. So how does this all connect?

Exhibit B has some footage of a weird structure dubbed the Lunar Landing Research Facility and at the end explains that it was destroyed by extreme weather that was manipulated by an "unknown entity." The plot thickens. The video labeled Exhibit C is all about the Advanced Research Lab at NASA, where Arthur works. It claims that the Mars project was, again, manipulated by some "unknown entity." Whenever I hear that I think alien, but that's a bit too creepy for me to even think about. Did they also design some spaceship? It talks about schematics and you can see a ship off to the side in a few shots. What the heck is going on?

I really don't know what's going on in these videos, but I can tell you it has certainly made me more excited to see The Box. I've been looking forward to this movie for a while because I know that with Richard Kelly it's always more than just a simple story, and that certainly seems to be the case here. And now I really want to know what is going on and what this is all about. Check out the viral website and let us know if you find any else on there, as there may be more to uncover in the next week. Visit: youaretheexperiment.com.

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Related categories: Cool Stuff, Hype, Viral News