Review: The Box

Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella. Warner Bros. presents a film written and directed by Richard Kelly, based on the short story “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson. Rated PG-13(thematic elements, some violence and disturbing images). 113 minutes.

Richard Kelly’s The Box is alternately fascinating and perplexing, sometimes at once. The mastermind behind the cult hit Donnie Darko and the misconceived Southland Tales, in his best moments, offers a crusading intelligence and questioning about life and afterlife, the tangible and metaphysical and various states of reality. The Box is a highly creepy, sometimes effective morality play that falls somewhere between Kelly’s previous two films. He asks some big questions and produces some gorgeous images, but ultimately fails to connect the ambitious dots of his screenplay. But The Box often finds Kelly at his unnerving best, both serious in concept and stylish in execution. It doesn’t always work, but The Box frequently intrigues, even when it disappoints.

In suburban Virginia circa 1976, mysterious stranger Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) shows up on the doorstep of married couple Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur Lewis (James Marsden) with a mysterious box and tempting proposition. The box, deceptively simple in design, features a bright red button—which if pushed will cause the death of an innocent person somewhere in the world. It will also bring the couple a suitcase filled with $1 million dollars, no questions asked. To its credit, the film takes this deal with the devil very seriously. And like a gun waved in a Hollywood film, once the button is seen, we know it is destined to be deployed. The strapped couple find themselves in an ethical quagmire and Kelly effectively lays on their troubles, building suspense as we await the inevitable.

Norma and Arthur are no ordinary couple. Arthur is a back of the house scientist at Langley’s NASA base who was involved with the Viking project, yearning to be an astronaut but failing his psychological exam. Norma, who walks with a limping gait, is a college lit professor whose foot is severely disfigured from a past trauma. They have one adolescent son and a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. And Steward himself is missing half of his face from a past accident, and Norma finds this somehow complementary to her condition.

The first third of The Box features some satisfying art direction, period décor, cinematography and three very good performances from the leads, selling the hell out of the premise. Kelly manages a terrific shock when the button is pushed—a deceptively simple action, yet we’re aware how much we jump when Norma, overcome with indecisiveness decides to enact the wager, setting in motion a series of unpleasant events and revelations, none of them worth the $1 million, as the couple quickly discovers.

Kelly’s screenplay is based on Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button,” also a former Twilight Zone episode but this version is often convoluted and sometimes impenetrable. The confusing narrative involves: a legion of shadowy employees in service of the nefarious Steward, who sport frequent bloody noses; a mystery about space travel to Mars and a specialized camera which Arthur helped create; a sinister black sedan; cavernous aircraft hangers; and much other sci-fi mumbo jumbo all of which is watchable but feels frequently off-track and increasingly silly.

Diaz, freed from comedy, is effective as the traumatized heroine and Marsden excels at playing a nice guy and loving husband, not easy to do onscreen; their chemistry and believability as a couple in trouble is convincing. And Langella is diabolical and frightening, as are his minions who inhabit every corner of the deceptively normal suburb, recalling the conspiracies of Rosemary’s Baby in a film that is undeniably imaginative but half-baked.

- Lee Shoquist