ROOM 8: What’s Inside The Red Box?

Room 8, a short film written and directed by James W. Griffiths, takes place in a Russian prison. British prisoner Ives (Tom Cullen) is taken to a new cell, where he meets the mysterious Shears (Michael Gould). In the cell, Ives finds a red box, which piques his interest. Unable to fight his curiosity, he opens the box, and is shocked at what he finds.

Watch the short to find out what’s inside the box…

How about that! The ending is haunting and left me with a sense of dread. How would you react if you were to find a box like that? Do the boxes give access to a parallel universe, somehow? I have so many questions, and they all go unanswered. It’s a very mysterious film.

The implications regarding the justice system are also interesting: apparently, the guards are working with Shears to get rid of prisoners. It’s like a form of solitary isolation that takes in a lot less space, and eventually, assuming they don’t get food or water, they die in the matchboxes, they are essentially executed. In its essence, it’s an allegory for the current prison system, where prisoners are dehumanized and reduced to insignificant creatures, mandated by their own uncontrollable impulses – those that got them imprisoned in the first place, but also, in this case, curiosity.

Room 8 won the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for Best Short Film. It was selected in an online competition to be part of the five-part Bombay Sapphire Imagination series, based on a script by Oscar-winning screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher. Competitors were invited to pitch a script, based on Fletcher’s outline and the winners would get a significant budget to produce their short. 

Short of the Week spoke with Griffiths and asked him how he went about pitching and developing Fletcher’s script:

“The first thing I got from the bare script was that there had to be something really fascinating inside the box. I felt that to open a box and see the room that you where sitting in could provide some really cool visuals and an interesting story. Everything developed from there. Setting it in a prison cell came about when I wanted the man to jump out of the box at the end, but had no real reason for him to do so. So I had the idea of him jumping out to make himself small to escape under the door.”

“This was a much larger production than my previous films. I was used to working with a bare minimum crew with a very low budget, one of my previous films was even shot on mobile phones. This project gave me the opportunity to work with a great production company (Independent), with great actors on a great set.”

Griffiths’ originally was an editor, and started to direct shorts later, Room 8 only the third project he’s directed.

What do you think of Room 8? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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