The Box

Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Frank Langella star in a film based on a Richard Matheson story...what could be bad? How about the whole thing?

Written and directed by Richard Kelly, of "Donnie Darko" fame, you expect an off the wall story and you get it. The possibility of Martians conducting human experiments , zombie-like townspeople with nosebleeds, conspiracies by NASA and The NSA, it's quite the mix for a simple tale of human imperfection. Faced with a simple choice, "push the button and get a million dollars but a stranger dies", do you push it or not?

It's a promising premise and Mr. Langella is quite chilling as the messenger (with great CGI makeup) but the film loses it's way and get tangled up in it's own intricacies. In the end, it's just a convoluted mess.