★★★★ out of ★★★★★
🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 for screaming and addiction recovery.
Directed by Jack Dignan.
Skinamarink with real scares! Found footage follies! The year of Australian horror! Puzzle Box is the complete horror spook show!
If you haven’t been paying attention 2023 really is the year of Australian horror.
With offerings like Talk to Me, Late Night with the Devil, and Monolith, Australian filmmakers have been delivering truly wonderful horror. Puzzle Box is no exception.
Directed by the James Wan of Australia (no idea if this is a self-appointed title or not) Jack Dignan, Puzzle Box is an exceptionally interesting entry into the staid universe of found footage horror. The film follows two sisters, Kait (Kaitlyn Boyé) and Olivia (Laneikka Denne), who set out for a remote week of self-reflection and a last-ditch attempt to cure Kait of her lingering drug addiction.
The conceit in this found footage fest is that Olivia needs to document the addiction and the sister’s cure. She can’t put the camera down and must prove to an unspoken government body that Kait is cured of her addiction. Two loving sisters locked in a house together for a week to battle drug addiction. No problem.
The modern house is cozy, simple, and remote. Surrounded by a wooded area and part of a larger complex of home rentals. Nothing too terribly out of the ordinary. As Kait and Olivia begin to tour the house they quickly realize that the owners have not removed pharmaceuticals from the house and they kindly offered their guests a complimentary bottle of wine.
Olivia, understandably upset, slides into accusations about Kait’s addiction, her troubled relationship with their mother, and the disappointment she’s brought the family. As their discussion becomes more heated a door is slammed and things go from terse to full-on horror.
Kait ends up with the camera. The power is out and she’s saddled with the camera’s light to guide her through the house. The problem is all the rooms, the stairs, and the basic layout of the house are changing. Constantly. The moment Kait thinks she has the layout of the house settled, everything radically changes.
To make matters worse a blood-soaked woman appears in the house. To make matters extra terrible she begins screaming at Kait. No audible words, just yelling. In fact, the actress, Cassandre Girard, is credited as the screaming woman. In much the same way the 1973’s The Exorcist creates scares from tension, yelling, and a script that offers the audience no breaks, Puzzle Box takes many of the same queues.
While it becomes rather obvious that the puzzling nature of the house is a tortured (not in the pejorative) metaphor for addiction, the Puzzle Box offers incredible and unique scares. Director Jack Dignan, who also happens to be the editor and writer, does a wonderful job of creating a dizzying series of images that makes the Blair Witch Project look like it was entirely shot with a steady cam.
As Kait slips deeper into her doubts, worries, and fears about her addiction, Puzzle Box put audiences right there with her. Throughout the film you’re struggling, you’re confused, and you are truly worried about your fragile mental state. To drop audiences into the middle of actual addiction, in the context of found footage, is nothing short of brilliant.
Puzzle Box doesn’t offer much in the way of tidy conclusions and excessive exposition, and that’s kind of the point. Addiction is confusing and messy and there are no correct answers. It’s an ugly process and Dignan’s able to cut right to its dark core.
Puzzle Box is likely Rated R and was released on August 12, 2023.