Castle Rock Review: The Box (Season 1 Episode 4)
Castle Rock Season 1 Episode 4, “The Box,” continues to maintain its quiet tension right up to the point that it decides not to.
While watching “The Box,” I was reminded of Hannah Gadsby’s comedy special Nanette. In it, Gadsby explains the anatomy of a comedy routine, where you keep the audience in this place of tension and then defuse it with the punchline at just the right moment to give the audience that bit of fresh air.
In the end, it’s all for the audience’s ease and comfort, and the same kind of thinking is easily applied to Castle Rock.
“The Box” is able to stretch out the tension that you can only find in a small town like the titular one and is smart enough to know when to deal with it. The hour amps itself up and up to the point of breaking, and at just the right moment, it loosens its grip on the balloon and lets some of the air out.
They’re these small moments, but enough to make it not feel unbearable.
The series lets you believe that this is the way it operates: incremental tension and a minor release. When the show subverts that in such a big way in the third act of the episode, it feels like a small defiance. It’s as if the series is letting you know in this one singular act that this is a show where, despite what you may think, there aren’t rules — or if there are rules, they’re more than willing to break them.
Directed by Michael Uppendahl, “The Box” revels in the mood and eeriness that feels so intrinsic to a town like Castle Rock. A line from one of the previous episodes, Castle Rock Season 1 Episode 2, “Habeas Corpus,” from Dale Lacy feels particularly apt, especially given the actions at the end: “It wasn’t me. It was this town.”
That’s a line of thinking that really seems to sum up the series in a lot of respects. Dennis doesn’t lose his mind just from being trapped in the jail, like he says to Henry. But this is a town that is an amplifier. It takes what you’re feeling and propels it to its natural conclusion.
This is an old Stephen King theme: that there’s something insidious and unnatural lurking just below the surface of the idyllic town that the inhabitants train themselves not to notice.
It’s similar to the way that Derry is described in IT, but this is somehow even more devious than that. There’s no Pennywise the Clown infecting the town from the inside out. Instead, this is a town that simply is rotten to its core, which is a lot more frightening.
You can fight an evil clown, but how do you combat something as abstract as a town?
Despite all of that, this is a show that truly lives and dies on how well the characters that inhabit it interact with each other. “The Box” shows that this is where Castle Rock really shines.
Whether it’s Pangborn and his wry banter with Henry, or Ruth, existing either in a confused state of dementia or the big moments where she lets loose her cluttered thoughts, you aren’t waiting for something scary to happen because you just exist in these moments.
Scott Glenn and Sissy Spacek are no slouches in any regard, but the performance and character that stands apart as the best of the bunch is the realtor Molly Strand, played by Melanie Lynksey.
That might be because she seems like the most Stephen King character of the group, being a supernatural adjacent character in an already weird world. But she’s the one that has had the most care and sensitivity to from the start. Most of that credit goes to Lynskey, who has this genuine kind of effortless, disarming charm.
Some Stray Thoughts:
- One of the articles Henry looks at was written by “H. Howell.” That could be a reference to Brutus Howell from The Green Mile.
- Henry goes to visit Vince Desjardins, who is one of the antagonists from Stand By Me and who also appeared in Needful Things. That character may also be related to Miss Desjardin, the P.E. teacher from Carrie.
- Molly mentions that a strangler was killed in her house. This is likely a reference to the killer from The Dead Zone.
What did you think of this episode of Castle Rock? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Castle Rock airs Wednesdays on Hulu.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.