Review by Mark Longden
Possessed of an interesting title – why is it called “The Toybox” if it’s about a family taking a ride in an RV which breaks down in the desert? – and a cast of a much higher calibre than the average indie horror movie – Denise Richards and Mischa Barton are two of the stars – I was looking forward to watching this.
Without being too critical, it’s never a good sign when you can predict how the first scene in a movie will play out. There’s a dirty, old-looking RV parked on a street, and a kid on his bicycle. The RV’s door swings open. My wife immediately chimes in with “that kid’s getting sucked into that RV and the door will slam shut”. I guessed “blood splatter on the windows, as seen from the outside”. We were both right!
But, originality is sometimes overrated, and it’s what you do with the building blocks that’s important, not which building blocks you use. A family, led by patriarch Charles (David Violand), is about to go for a trip in his newly-purchased RV. There’s son Steve (writer Jeff Denton), his wife Jennifer (Denise Richards) and their daughter Olivia (Malika Michelle); as well as black sheep son Jay (other writer Brian Nagel). Along the way, they stop to help out a brother and sister who are broken down by the side of the road – Mark (Matt Mercer) and Samantha (Mischa Barton). As they turn off the main road to go and look at some cave paintings, they break down in the middle of the middle of nowhere.
I find it difficult to shake logic at times. Like, put yourself in Charles’ position. You’ve bought some old RV and are planning to take it on a long journey through some inhospitable terrain. Do you:
- get it checked out by a mechanic, stock up on supplies, and make sure you’ve got some method of contacting help if you get stuck; then maybe pop a bike on the back so you can drive to get help if all else fails?
Or
- do absolutely nothing and assume it’ll all work out?
No prizes for guessing which one Charles picked. As they sit in the baking heat, trying to work out how to fix the RV, tensions – already at a pretty high level – rise further, and they also start seeing things, like figures out of the corner of their eye, or the broken TV will turn itself on, showing scenes from earlier in the movie, but with a blood-soaked ghostly figure in the middle of the action. And then people start dying. Can they figure out what’s going on or get out of danger before they all succumb?
There are lots and lots of problems with this movie, but I’m going to start with the obvious ones. They’re on a road, a small road, sure, but how far can they possibly be from either a busier road or a town? In 2018? Even with their poor preparedness, why not send one of the reasonably fit brothers with plenty of water to walk back to the road and find help / a working phone signal? There’s a strong feeling of “The Hills Have Eyes”, but that at least had the excuse of being made over 40 years ago. Also, did he not open a single drawer or cupboard in that RV before buying it?
Mischa Barton is excellent, not sure why she’s not getting bigger roles than this; she’s sadly the outlier. Richards is terrible, with a weirdly immobile face not really helping proceedings, and the two brothers are just painfully average. The lack of emotion shown when their nearest and dearest start dying is one of the more curious choices “The Toybox” makes. I’ve not mentioned one character, but when you see him you’ll definitely think “why is Fred Armisen doing an impression of someone from the 1970s in this movie?”
It’s not terrible. It’s shot handheld competently, although when I see those massive desert vistas, I don’t think they’re particularly beautiful, just empty. It’s just like so many other horror movies, the “spam in a can” genre with the can changed a little. It’s fine, and it does make a couple of bold choices, but if you’ve seen many horror movies, you’ll recognise perhaps a little too much of this one.
