The Box

The film initially grabs you with its air of mystery, all the things it hasn't told you about what's happened in the past. And then it sucks you into a story in the present, a criminal education, and a wonderfully ambiguous relationship between the boy and his new employer. But what does the boy really make of it all?

It's fast moving, engaging, often surprising, but never opaque. What holds you, apart from a magnetic central performance, is the style: every shot seems to containing meaning, and edited to the very bare bones.

The director made an earlier film, From Afar, that was also powerfully cinematic; this is its equal.