Most successful and impactful films are multifaceted in one way or another. Whether they are stories about many characters that are involved in an ever-evolving situation or a single location or person that the story is focused on, there is more than just what is surface level. Some films on the other hand want to capture an emotion with the use of its locations, characters, and situation to inspire feelings such as dread or excitement. Then there are films like The Special where a man has sex with a wooden box for 94 minutes, that’s it.

After discovering that his wife may be having an affair Jerry is coerced by his friend to visit Madame Zhora’s. While he thinks his friend is about to buy him a prostitute, he is instead convinced to have what they call “The Special.” In an unassuming room, Jerry finds a mysterious wooden box with the message “stick it in here” carved into it and a hole below. Figuring why the hell not, Jerry proceeds to use the box and passes out from the pleasure. Waking up later that night Jerry finds he has become obsessed with the box and begins to go down a dark path to experience it again.

While anyone reading that description would probably find it hard to believe that the movie is nothing but a man continually having sex with a box, they would be wrong. Where most movies would have the main character slowly be corrupted by his newfound addiction with supporting characters trying to aid, The Special is not most movies. No joke–this is just a paper-thin character with no development beyond having sex with a box as the other characters barely exist and the story meanders until it ends. While there are some fun practical effects for less than ten minutes of the film, it is just an absolute tedious nightmare to get to them.

Saying Jerry is a single-dimensional character before, and after, he becomes addicted to The Special is putting it kindly. After the introduction credits showing a carpenter making the sex box, the audience is just dropped into the plot that Jerry is going to cheat on his wife. Already our main has been shown to be selfish and easily manipulated making for a character that no one wants to follow and in less than 25 minutes he has murdered someone in the pursuit to steal the sex box. In David Cronenberg’s The Fly what makes Brundle’s fall to the teleporter so tragic is that he is a good charismatic character that is slowly destroyed by his addiction to his own creation. Jerry simply starts out as a miserable character and just instant becomes awful, leaving him nowhere to develop and instead just stagnate.

There are arguments to be made that The Special is a commentary about addiction, sex addiction to be more specific, and the destruction is can reap on someone’s life but the evidence to back that up is shallow at best. As it stands it is a film that just exists to perplex the audience and raise the question of why was it made in the first place.

2 out of 10