Not boxing clever
It’s an interesting enough idea – The Box (2009) by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko (2001), adapted by the director from the Richard Matheson short story Button, Button) has a provocative talking point at its core – would you push a button that you knew would kill a complete stranger somewhere, if the prize was a million dollars by way of reward? Sure enough, a horror/mystery/Twilight-Zone hound such as I was more than intrigued.
Until, of course, Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz) chooses to press the button (and that’s not a giveaway, honest) and the film quickly dovetails into an incoherent smorgasbord of ideas that includes aliens, government conspiracies, mind games and superfluous twists and turns that prove to be the movie’s downfall, as there is simply no way that any narrative could deliver on what is being suggested.
In fact, it’s the first part of The Box that is the most interesting, in which Norma and her partner’s pressing need for the million bucks is explained, and philosophical issues arise from the question at the story’s heart, namely whether a value, any value, can be set on a human life?
Kelly had the chance to turn his leads into Everyman characters, which would have improved audience empathy no end, but what we are left with (thanks also in no small part, with the exception of Diaz, to really rather poor acting across the board, particularly from Frank Langella as would-be creepy box-bringer Arlington Steward), is little more than a superficial, X-Filesesque descent into silliness that’s really not worth looking into.
115 mins.
