The Box

The H-Bomb: Arthur and Norma Lewis (James Marsden and Cameron Diaz) are a perfectly happy middle class married couple living in 1970’s suburban Virginia. She’s a teacher at a private school, he’s a NASA scientist, and they have a young son, Walter (Sam Oz Stone). One day, a stranger by the name of Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) arrives on their doorstep. A vaguely sinister man, missing a portion of his face, Steward delivers a strange wooden box with a large red button on the top and makes Norma an offer: if she presses the button, her family will be given one million dollars in cash, but… someone in the world, a complete stranger, will die.

The other conditions are that she has 24 hours to decide, and she is only allowed to discuss it with her husband. If she tries to talk to anyone else about it, then Steward will somehow know about it and the deal will be off. While their first instinct is to tell this Steward guy to take his box and shove it up his rectum, the Lewis’s realize that they are strapped for cash, and that they won’t be able to afford to send their son to private school for much longer.

They also notice that other people around them have been acting strangely and suffering from nose bleeds. And just who the hell is this Steward guy, anyway, and what is this box? Could it have something to do with that Mars project Arthur has been working on…?

“The Box” is a movie that took me a couple of viewings to form a solid opinion on, and even then, I’m not sure how solid it is. Much like with writer/director Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales”, there’s a lot about it that I liked, but there were things about it that I wasn’t too crazy about, which ultimately kept me from loving it. Given the studio budget and the cast, I expected this to be more mainstream than Kelly’s first two films, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Even though it’s more focused and palatable than “Southland Tales”, it’s still quite odd and obscure in places.

Adapted from a (very) short story by Richard Matheson (“Duel”, “Stir of Echoes”), this is actually a film that I can’t say much about without giving away spoilers. It’s part sci-fi, part morality tale, and part Richard Kelly mind fuck. The first hour or so of the movie recalls some of the great paranoia thrillers of the past, particularly “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. Helped by Langella’s subtly menacing performance and an terrifically eerie music score, it brilliantly establishes intrigue and builds up tension. I was all set to love it…

Then, along came the last act, where for me it just fell apart. Again, I can’t go into detail, but the way this set up played out just didn’t quite do it for me. I’m not sure where it went astray. Perhaps it was when Kelly fell back on his tired watery portal idea that he’s used in all three of his flicks now, I can’t quite say. I just know that it all but completely fizzled towards the end.

However, this is not at all a bad film. Far from it, in fact. The performances are all strong; Langella, again, is excellent, and Diaz and Marsden are very convincing as an average married couple who are thrust into this strange predicament and are forced to make some very difficult decisions. Many of the best science fiction films out there also deal with themes of morality intelligently, and this one is no different. It makes us think, “What would we do if someone told us to press a button, and we would get a million dollars, knowing that a stranger would die.” We would all like to say that we absolutely would not press the button… but you never know. A million dollars is a million dollars, and people die every day…

While not perfect, this is a smart, suspenseful film that may be frustrating at times, but is intriguing throughout. It’s not as powerful or engaging as Kelly’s “Donnie Darko”, it’s certainly an improvement over the messy, scatter-brained “Southland Tales”. Definitely worthwhile for filmgoers who like to think outside the box (sorry).