In 2019, my family and I decided to dive into the deep end of the 72 Hour Horror Film Race. For those who haven’t lived through the frantic glory of a timed race, they give you a theme, an action, and a prop that must be included. For us, the “creative soup” consisted of: “Forbidden Fruit,” “a cold, hard stare,” and a box.
From that weird little collection of ingredients, Box Boy was born.
There is something uniquely magical – and let’s be honest, completely unhinged – about making a film in such a tiny window. You don’t have the luxury of overthinking. You just have to move. You write, you scout, you solve problems on the fly, and you laugh when things inevitably get ridiculous. It’s essentially filmmaker summer camp, but with way less sleep and a lot more fake horror.
What made Box Boy special, though, wasn’t just the challenge – it was the crew. This was a full-on Lacroix family effort.
At the time, Hayden was 8 and Tyler was 14, and both of them were right in the thick of it. All of us appeared in the film, which makes watching it back now feel like looking at a living, breathing time capsule. There’s something so rewarding about capturing your family at a specific moment in time – not just in a posed photo, but as a bunch of sleep-deprived goblins working together to make something strange under pressure.
Erika also got to flex her talents by doing some wonderfully unsettling makeup on me for my scenes. There is a very specific kind of joy in having your spouse transform you into something creepy and then immediately having to act like, “Yes, this is my life now. I am the Box Boy.”
Looking back, Box Boy reminds me that filmmaking doesn’t need a massive production to be meaningful. Sometimes the best projects are the scrappy ones born from a fun prompt and a willing family. Time moves in that rude, inconsiderate way it likes to – the kids are older now, things have changed – but we’ll always have this weird little horror movie we made together in 2019.
Honestly, re-watching it makes me want to do it all over again. Another mad-dash weekend, another strange story, and another excuse to throw ourselves into the creative fire to see what comes out the other end.
Because at the end of the day, those are the projects that stick with you. Not just for the final cut, but for the experience of making them. And Box Boy was a damn fun one.
