SXSW Film

Four Boxes

Narrative Feature, Emerging Visions
D: Wyatt McDill; with Justin Kirk, Terryn Westbrook, Sam Rosen

Two cynical prigs (Kirk and Rosen) who run a business liquidating dead people's estates on the Internet say, at the beginning of Four Boxes, that they've hit the jackpot: A stranger has died, with no relatives to claim his estate. They move into his house, soon to be joined by a talentless singer-songwriter (Westbrook) who has, awkwardly, dated both guys. It's clear at the beginning of Four Boxes that McDill and producer Megan Huber are up to something tricky, because watching these three jackasses spar for 85 minutes would be little more than an effective goad to self-mutilation. Sure enough, in the dead man's house is a computer bookmarked to FourBoxes.tv, a site that depicts two terrorists doing awful things to innocent people and animals; the three squatters are instantly hooked and become zombie-ish voyeurs. There is a smart, compelling thriller at the heart of Four Boxes; you just have to wade through an obvious morality tale to get there.

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Friday, March 20, 7pm, Alamo South Lamar