Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on November 5, 2009 and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
To answer the most obvious question right away: No, sadly, Richard Kelly’s The Box is not a return to the absorbingly strange glories of his knockout debut feature Donnie Darko. But nor is it as frustratingly out of control as his follow-up film Southland Tales either. In fact, it’s kind of a combination of both: opening and closing reels of compelling and dark personal drama surrounding more expansive, elaborate plotting that loses its grip.
Based on Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story “Button, Button,” The Box relocates the action to Virginia in 1976, where Arthur Lewis (James Marsden) is a NASA technician and his wife Norma (Cameron Diaz, with a fetching drawl) teaches at the private school attended by their preteen son Walter (Sam Oz Stone). They’re a loving couple, and Arthur is even taking advantage of his skills and facility to create a prosthesis for Norma’s disfigured foot that will allow her to walk without a limp. Then a double dose of bad news hits: Arthur is turned down for entree into an astronaut program that would bring a significant salary hike, and Norma is told she’ll no longer be receiving a staff discount for Walter’s tuition. Into these dire financial straits walks Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), a mysterious man missing part of his face who arrives with the titular unit and an offer for the Lewises: If they push a button on the box, they’ll receive a million dollars in cash—and someone they don’t know will die.
This sets the stage for an ethical dilemma, and a certain amount of rationalization: What if, for example, the deceased person will be a murderer on Death Row? There’s a built-in tension, if not a great amount of suspense, since if they choose to let the button be, the story won’t be able to proceed to feature length. Still, Kelly is able to keep the viewer on edge in the scenes leading up to the Lewises’ decision, and once it has been made, Mr. Steward returns to collect the box—and deliver the punchline from the 1986 Twilight Zone episode also based on Matheson’s tale (which alters the author’s ending). Needless to say, rather than being solved, the Lewises’ problems are only just beginning.
So are the movie’s. From here, both the protagonists’ lives and the narrative spin inexorably out of control, and the focus on moral quandaries gets lost. Arthur goes looking into the secrets of Mr. Steward’s background, Norma gets drawn into it against her will and The Box turns into a science-fiction variation on ’70s paranoid thrillers like The Parallax View in which all the world seems to be turning against them, as numerous bit players start acting weird, following them around and sporting sudden nosebleeds, with interfamily murder worked into the mix as well. Kelly’s storytelling in the movie’s middle hour is complex, but in a frustrating rather than satisfying way, and even though the many threads eventually do wind up being tied together, too often the scenario feels like it’s strange for the sake of being strange, rather than because its ongoing developments support the central idea.
It’s no accident that The Box regains its footing once it gets back to just Diaz, Marsden and Langella in a room together, and the ultimate price the Lewises must pay becomes revealed. All the scenes of massing, apparently possessed human drones and CGI trickery can’t equal the menace of Langella’s understated delivery—even if, with his low, raspy voice and talk about life-or-death decisions, Mr. Steward sometimes comes off as an urbane cousin of the Saw films’ Jigsaw. The actor’s face has been treated with digital manipulation that replaces his left cheek and lower jaw with recessed CG scar tissue, which is technically seamless even as it may have you thinking a little too much about how technically seamless it is. On all levels, The Box has been extremely well-crafted; cinematographer Steven Poster, using the Panavision Digital system, provides vaguely soft images that combine nostalgic warmth and eeriness, while Alexander Hammond’s production design contrasts comforting domesticity with futuristic chill, all backed by a pleasing, seemingly nonstop old-fashioned score by Win Butler, Régine Chassagne and Owen Pallett of the indie rock band Arcade Fire.
Beyond concern for its central characters, the key emotional hook here is for audiences to think outside The Box and ask themselves what they would do in the Lewises’ situation: Would you push the button? The fascination with that act and its consequences does come through in the movie’s first 30 and last 20 minutes, and it’s a shame that the hour in between gets muddled in far less Earthbound affairs.
