First Edition (2017) Ebook
Limited Edition (2021) Paperback
First published back in March of 2017 (in ebook format) British extreme horror author Matt’s Shaw’s novella ‘Box’ offered up a story of terrifying psychological horror and the gradual systematic breaking of one man’s spirit to go on. The story was later adapted by Purgatory Pictures into a feature-length film of the same name, which was directed, starred and produced by Shaw.
As part of a crowd-funding phase for the making, editing and release of the film, a limited-edition paperback of the novella was released in July of 2021. This was the first time the novella had been given a physical publication and was limited to just twenty hand numbered copies. The limited-edition version was signed by Matt Shaw as well as key members of the filming team: Justin Park (Sound & Production), Maria Lee Metheringham (Producer) and Jamie Walker (Cameras).
The film adaptation was first screened in July of 2021 (the same month as the limited-edition paperback was released). In September of 2022 the novella was then rereleased, with a free digital download of the film accompanying each purchase.
This review is of the limited-edition version, which contains the same text as the original and the subsequent ‘combined-novella-&-film-package’ rerelease versions.
Over the past four years, Frank and Robert had struck up a good relationship. Robert was certainly one of the kinder guards on death row. He’d always treated Frank fairly. Looked after him as best he could. That had included preparing Frank for this day.
Now that day was here it was time for Frank to fulfil his sentence.
They’d restrained Frank with chains and transported him from his cell to the death chamber. Although Frank wasn’t going to put up any resistance. What was the point? Bitching and crying wasn’t going to get him anywhere different. By the stroke of midnight, they would be injecting him with a concoction of lethal poisons no matter what he said or did. So, he might as well go out with whatever dignity he had left.
Despite his willingness to fulfil his sentence, Frank didn’t want to die. However, unlike some of the men who’d walked the green mile before him, Frank felt he deserved what was coming. After all, he’d killed a man. Ended a man’s life in a moment of pure rage.
Frank was ready to die now. So, as he sat there waiting, eyes closed, needles inserted into his veins in readiness for the lethal poisons to enter his blood stream, he finally surrendered all and simply awaited the blanket of death. But that all-consuming eternity of blackness never came. Instead, Frank eventually became aware of a light heat upon his retinas through his closed eyelids.
Opening his eyes, Frank finds he’s lying in a ball on the floor of a box. The four walls, ceiling and floor are a stark white, with hot bulbs burning brightly behind them, illuminating the box to almost an uncomfortable level.
Frank realises he’s also no longer wearing his prison outfit, but he’s instead naked other than for two small plasters covering where the needles had once been inserted.
Disorientated and confused, he tries to stand but finds the ceiling a couple of inches too low to allow him to stand to his full height. The five-foot length and breadth of the box feels even more restrictive.
Frank has no idea where he is, or what’s in store for him. No idea if this is heaven or hell or if he’s even dead. He can’t make sense of any of it. Not until a voice from directly outside the box breaks the silence.
Frank is alive. But what awaits him within the confines of this small box, will make him wish he wasn’t…
I’m an absolute sucker for an imaginatively inspired plot. One you can’t fully pigeonhole, other than tag it with a relatively generic ‘psychological horror’ badge. Although this novella absolutely is horrifically psychological. But it’s got such a perfectly simple but incredibly inspired idea to it. It kind of reminds me of the first time I watched Vincenzo Natali’s ‘Cube’ (1997). It’s an idea embedded in what makes us human, what drives us and connects us to each other, but it achieves this window to our souls through a horrifying display of psychological torment. Yeah, this one gets in your head a bit!
The novella starts off feeling like a chapter taken straight out of Stephen King’s ‘The Green Mile’ (1996). In fact, Shaw even makes mention of the infamous, green-tiled pathway in the story.
However, after these opening few chapters, the tale takes a very sudden twist, when Frank opens his eyes to find himself naked and trapped within this brightly illuminated box. The remaining three-quarters, or so, of the novella exhibit a psychological prison that’s as brutal as it is tauntingly stark. Honestly, this shit is so utterly captivating and engaging and also just brilliantly executed.
The novella might only be relatively short, but it opens up a lot of questions. It ponders and provokes, like a child incessantly stabbing at a dying pet. Justice and morality are sliced open and inspected in an almost clumsy fashion. Furthermore, no absolute answers are brought into the searing light for us, but nevertheless enough is fed to us by Shaw to feel the story accomplishes the emotional terror and torment it set out to do with a skeleton of purpose behind it.
The plot itself comes across as like something almost akin to James Wan’s ‘Saw’ (2004), only with everything stripped back to be left with the simple bare bones of the piece. The absolute essence of the psychological torture.
It’s probably fait to say that the psychologically sadistic concept behind the story – the box – and how it gradually crushes Frank is what drives the entire piece. The sole purpose of the box was to strip Frank of whatever traces of humanity he may have had left. To psychologically break him over-and-over-and-over again.
The villain of the story, if we are to try to point a finger at such, is given a voyeuristic presence in the whole thing. A position of absolute power over another, whereby he takes almost a justified pleasure from staring it at Frank’s vulnerability, breaking him down with a slow hellish torture.
The story is a powerfully evocative and incredibly well written piece that yanks hard at your guts. The stark stripped-back feel and crudeness of the premise compliments the cold, sterile brutality of the story perfectly. Indeed, some of the best stories are those with the very simplest of ideas behind them.
The Purgatory Pictures film adaptation sticks relatively closely to the original story. The opening ‘Green Mile’ aspect is a spoken narration over the opening credits, with no visual elements accompanying it.
The box itself in the film isn’t quite the brightly lit chamber as it appears in the novella, and Frank (i.e. Shaw) also isn’t completely bollock-naked. Furthermore, and slightly disappointingly, the meagre sustenance provided to Frank during this ordeal is very different, and the ending, which I won’t spoil here, has also been majorly altered. Nevertheless, the film remains relatively close to the text and provides a strong visual take on the psychological journey Shaw so vividly depicted in the original novella.
The limited-edition version of the novella runs for a total of 70 pages.
© DLS Reviews
