Reviews for Sea in a Box

It's a Chinese animated movie about a group of testers who were invited to playtest a new virtual reality video game. They all come from different walks of life but quickly bond over their curiosity of this game world. They explore and wonder, they meet NPCs and experience their customs and even go on something of a quest. Which goes horribly wrong. It's a Lovecraftian psychological horror drama in a virtual reality. It has some really cool ideas, but it all kind of falls flat because the main character cast is just so boring. I'm not really going to get into because of spoilers butI had to watch this movie over three days as I was falling asleep throughout. The first two thirds of this rather long movie seriously drag on, and only kept me interested because of the many twists and surprises it kept throwing my way. I suppose the authors were really going for that "suspense" and "shock" value but I didn't get much of that. It comes somewhat alive by the end with flashy action and a pretty epic scenery which did remedy some of the bad taste, but ultimately I was just glad to have it over with.

I will remember this movie for it's fantastic concept, not for the story it tells.

If you're into Lovecraft you might like it a lot more than I did.

6/10