Release Date: 04 December 2009

Director: Richard Kelly.

Starring: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, Sam Oz Stone.

Details: US / 115mins (15A).

Donnie Darko is looking more and more like a fluke. Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult favourite was bizarre, sure, but it was accessible; his follow up, Southland Tales, was confusing to say the least (answers on a postcard as to what it was about). The Box is easier to understand than its predecessor... for a while. The pitch is simple and intriguing: say a strange man comes to your door with a box and tells you that if you press its button you’ll receive a million in cash no questions asked. BUT when you do press it, someone else, someone you don’t know, will die. Do you press it? 

Norma Lewis (Diaz) wants to press it because she and her husband Arthur (Marsden) have money troubles. Why they’re struggling financially isn’t made clear - they live in an affluent Virginian suburb, he works for Nasa, she’s a teacher and there’s a tasty Corvette in the drive. One day, Arlington Steward (Langella), a shadowy man with half his face missing, arrives at the door with a box and presents the moral dilemma. 

The Box is based on Button, Button, a short story by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) and has already been adapted for The Twilight Zone (an adaptation the author isn’t pleased with). His short covers the first half of this adaptation but the second half is where Kelly lets loose his imagination and where everything starts to get weird. For ‘weird’ read ‘fall apart’. The Box begins to play around with the consequences of the Lewis’ decision: zombie-like people appear with bleeding noses, say cryptic things and disappear. What’s going on? Is it something to do with Sartre? Aliens? Portals in motel pools? Lightening? The Mars Viking Project? I’m sure Richard Kelly can explain it all if you gave him an hour in a quiet coffee shop so he could break it down for you, but the answers aren’t on the screen. 

The Box, like Southland Tales, is split right down the middle - half of it works, half of it doesn’t; half it boasts some great ideas, half of it is too ‘out there’ to get your head around. Especially on first viewing. The Box splits this reviewer down the middle too - half of me loves that there is someone like Richard Kelly out there who delights in taking your brain for a ride, the other half wishes he would explain himself better. There’s a moment in The Box where, had Kelly rolled the credits, it would have been a far better film (whenLangella returns to take the box). But on The Box trundles, expanding on Matheson’s story, tying itself up in knots and needless tangents that only perplex.

Review by Gavin Burke