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‘Box’ will leave you not caring
Movie
The Box
Norma and Arthur Lewis are a suburban couple with a young child who receive an anonymous gift bearing fatal and irrevocable consequences. A simple wooden box, it promises to deliver its owner $1 million with the press of a button. However, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world--someone they don't know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the crosshairs of a startling moral dilemma and face the true nature of their humanity.
‘THE BOX’
Grade: F
Director: Richard Kelly
Length: 1:56
Rated: PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence and disturbing images.
By RAFER GUZMAN
The object that gives this movie its title looks intriguing indeed, made of handsome hardwood and topped by a large, red button. Press it, and you will receive $1 million in cash — but someone you don’t know will die.
In “The Box,” this choice is presented not by Howie Mandel but by Frank Langella as a horribly disfigured but well-tailored man named Arlington Steward. One day in 1976 he pays a visit to NASA engineer Arthur Lewis (James Marsden) and his schoolteacher wife, Norma (Cameron Diaz). They could use the money: He has hit a salary plateau, and Norma’s school has stopped offering cut-rate tuition for their son, Walter (Sam Oz Stone).
The movie’s moral crux comes from Richard Matheson’s 1970 story “Button, Button,” which has been adapted before, into a 1986 episode of “The Twilight Zone.” In hindsight, the writer-director of “The Box,” Richard Kelly (“Donnie Darko”), may be realizing that the shorter format was the better one.
Aware that audiences wouldn’t sit through two hours of yes or no, deal or no deal, Kelly pads his film with an incoherent conspiracy plot (Steward’s first name is a hint) and several borrowed half-notions. The townsfolk start acting like invaders from Mars. A space odyssey begins. And it looks like this might be the day the Earth stands still.
When “The Box” starts babbling about religion, you’ll have long stopped caring. But you have a choice: If you stay at home, you will save $10 — and a movie you don’t know will die.