Dir. Jack Dignan (2024)
An addict and her sister head to a house in the country for rehab, where they find themselves trapped by a changing location that won't let them leave.
There's something so creepy about being in a physical location that doesn't follow realistic physical constraints. The subject has been played with before, perhaps most famously in Mark Z. Danielewski's cult novel House of Leaves. Doors that lead to nowhere, never-ending hallways, impossible architecture... it all adds up to a severely off-putting aesthetical surrounding that makes an audience feel uneasy and just wrong. Writer/director Jack Dignan provides his own take on the topic through the lens of two damaged sisters in an AirBnB that has its own demons to deal with.
Drug addict Kait (Kaitlyn Boyé) and sister Olivia (Laneikka Denne) head to a deserted house in the woods, a rental property that the pair plan on using to get Kait clean. Olivia documents the process with a handheld camera, filming everything the girls do in the process. Shortly after arrival, the pair hear a woman screaming in the woods, and when they're unable to track down the source of the sounds, they retire to the house for the night. The house begins changing, and the sisters find themselves unable to escape as their personal difficulties threaten to overwhelm their attempts to deal with struggles both internal and external.
Puzzle Box utilizes its found footage to good effect, taking a first-person view inside the house with a lot of disorienting attempts to make the house appear bigger, or different, than it is as first glance. Boyé and Denne are good as well, emphasizing the strife between their characters in a way that is real and very believable. The surroundings are creepy, and the use of night vision and quickly edited-in flashbacks help provide an extra layer to the story than what would exist simply from a linear, well-lit telling of the story.
Unfortunately, the scares are all fairly one-note. There's a screaming woman who occasionally runs at the camera, and while it's fairly effective the first time it happens, it quickly wears out its welcome. It feels very much like they only really had one idea for where they wanted to fear to come from, so they just use it over and over in an attempt to get a rise out of their audience. There needs to be more than that, though. A few jumpscares and some yelling just isn't enough to make the film compelling, becoming more irritating before too long than it ever really was scary.
That is, ultimately, the downfall of the film. It's creepy, and I found myself wanting to know what the hell was going on with the house, but the constant screaming when the film was trying to scare the audience just got annoying after a while. Otherwise, after a fairly strong introduction that makes you care about the characters, the film is just a lot of walking around in the dark and waiting to be yelled at again. It's effective for what it is, but it doesn't ever become more than just a sum of its relatively barebones parts.
Who this movie is for: Found footage devotees, Jumpscare fans, Bad architects
Bottom line: Puzzle Box has a good idea but poorly executes, focusing far more on message than scares but rarely delivering either. It's decently scary at first, but quickly wears out its welcome as it continually throws the same thing at its audience again and again. The performances are good, though, and it's disorienting enough to make it a relatively mind-bending watch. If you're a fan of found footage, it may be worth your time.
