The Toybox is a 2018 horror film about an estranged family who take a trip to the desert in their used RV only to learn it holds terrible, haunting secrets.
While an argument might be made that any genre of film is simply a mix and match set of parts that requires only a cast of disposable characters to see it through, horror seems the most pliable in exploiting this. It’s about tapping into baser fears and tossing them into the machine, set on rinse and repeat. For fans, it’s a bit of a fix, however it’s not exactly a home to innovation. Now comes Tom Nagel‘s latest The Toybox, a fairly conventional house of horrors on wheels that rigorously plays by the rules, setting them up and knocking them down without much fun, despite some energetic performances.
Married couple Jennifer (Denise Richards) and Steve (Jeff Denton), along with their young daughter Olivia (Malika Michelle), decide to go on a mini vacation with Steve’s father Charles (Greg Violand) and Steve’s irresponsible and hopelessly obnoxious brother Jay (Brian Nagel). They do so by packing themselves inside Charles’ new camper van, which is not new at all but rather a rusting heap of scrap metal barely able to start. It’s also, as we the audience already knows, haunted. Against all possible logic, the gang heads straight out into the desert, some fifty miles from anywhere, along the way picking up stranded couple Samantha (Mischa Barton) and Mark (Matt Mercer) on the side of the road. You can be sure, not long after, the RV breaks down (well, technically ‘driven’ by demons living inside), leaving one of them dead and the beginning of a nightmare as they try and survive.
Cheesy supernatural horror has a long, almost traditional, place in cinema, with vehicular mayhem in particular hosting a number of silly yet amusing titles, including Stephen King‘s Christine and Maximum Overdrive. Unfortunately, The Toybox is not written by King. It’s by Denton, in his writing debut, and while it’s certainly unfair to make the comparison, the film is just too obvious, running along a very straight and narrow road with most everything seen coming miles ahead. The RV is possessed by evil, luring in and killing its victims with gruesome effect, though with this lot of fodder gathered together for slaughter, it takes its time, making things look like ‘accidents’ even though we’ve already seen quite the opposite at the start.
Either way, there’s not much here that we’ve not seen before, with director Nagel relying on a short checklist of standards to prop up the horror. Admittedly, these are the very ingredients that perhaps die-hards are waiting for, and as such, at least satisfy on some level. There’s also a bit of creativity in how the RV replays its horrors so those it affects can witness tragedy from a different, and helpless, perspective. It’s a small twist that might have been used more effectively, but does at least offer up something a little fresh. I’ll further give the ending some credit for being wildly absurd, in a good way.
Shot on location with some notable work by cinematographer Ken Stachnik, the film ultimately is a little too on the nose, with a mixed bag of work from the cast. Barton, unsurprisingly, comes off best, easily the most convincing and doing better than the story even deserves while Richards just goes off the rails. While most horror movies are meant to be taken with a grain of salt, nearly nothing about The Toybox makes any sense, which in itself would be fine, except there’s not much else about it to make it any fun to watch. It’s surely trying to be ironic, and we await the twist ending that would explain why these people were chosen but it never comes. Not nearly dark enough to make it significant, and missing great opportunities for black comedy, this is a tepid entry that will fill the time before the next.
The Toybox releases nationwide September 18th.