Richard Kelly broke onto our screens with one of the most audacious debut films in modern cinema; his Donnie Darko, released in 2001, caused quite a sensation, making cult stars out of both Kelly himself and lead Jake Gyllenhaal. Since then, Kelly has directed the strangely alluring, surreal misfire that was Southland Tales, and now brings us The Box, an adaptation of Richard Matheson’s story “Button, Button”, which was itself already adapted in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Initially more subdued than his previous films, The Box begins in a surprisingly restrained manner (aside from a memo that opens the film, sure to baffle you until the film’s close), introducing us to Arthur Lewis (James Marsden) and his wife Norma (Cameron Diaz), a seemingly decent, middle-class couple who also have a young son, Walter (Sam Oz Stone). A package is delivered to their door early one morning, with a box inside, after which a mysterious man named Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) arrives, telling them that if they press the button on top of the box, they will receive one million dollars, and also that one person who they don’t know will die.

While the box itself arrives mere minutes into the film, the couple um-and-ah over whether to push the button for a while, made all the more frustrating because in the interim, we’re treated to scenes – such as Norma revealing her deformed foot, and Arthur being turned down for a tasty new job – which would seem to inform their decision to press the button or not, but these issues never surface during the dialogue between them. In their discussion, it is almost purely on a moral basis, which seems not only a touch unrealistic, but a strange method of direction; why show us these scenes of their clear financial difficulty if you aren’t going to exploit them later?

What does The Box offer? Expectedly, a shedload of weirdness, from several creepy and laughably precocious kids, to, in the more revealing second hour, plenty of water and a plot that desperately tries to scramble the plot threads together. The shell plot itself actually works fairly well, but what doesn’t is the padding throughout; at 116 minutes, this isn’t a brisk picture, and the audience will probably feel it, for Kelly overdoes the strangeness a fair few notches with some frustratingly vague storytelling to begin with, and then a payoff that is drip-fed. If compressed or re-edited (as Kelly did with Donnie Darko), there is probably a fun rendition of a classic story in here somewhere amid the portentous ambition.

For a Kelly film, some of the strangeness is dumbfoundingly conventional: we have a main antagonist whose scheme is more convoluted than a straight run of the Saw franchise, and scenes such as where “no exit” is scrawled over the iced-up windshield of the family’s car aren’t so much creepy as they are quite laughable, as is also true when Arthur is tailed by an ever-increasing group of goons in a library, and when an “ominous” Father Christmas stands in the middle of the road ringing a bell.

The Box owes all of its failures to Kelly’s script; all of its pacing issues, its corny attempts at tension, and its awkward dialogues, can be traced back to him. There’s really no excuse for Kelly, because making a lean and taut 90-minute thrill-fest out of this story should have been a doddle for a writer and director as talented as he, but in his attempt to craft yet another bewildering existential meditation, he has left the charm and other compelling elements at the door.  

Given the talent on hand, The Box is ultimately a film you’ll want to like more than you actually do. Kelly once again fails to create the same surreal magic he mustered on his debut feature, and despite the earnest efforts of Marsden and Diaz, the only actor who doesn’t fall prey to the rickety dialogue is Langella, who evidently relishes playing the bad guy. Ultimately, there are some clever ideas at play, as well as lots of pleasant digital photography, and if you’re willing to sift through the driftwood to find what absolutely had the makings of an economic B-movie homage, then you might be sporadically entertained by The Box, if frustrated also.