The Box

(2009) dir. Richard Kelly
viewed: 04/02/10

Oh Dear.

Writer/director Richard Kelly, most notable for the 2001 film Donnie Darko, brings forth his latest version of end-of-the-world catclysm sci-fi gobbledygook.  How far and how fast he has fallen.   Let’s face it, Donnie Darko was an indie oddity whose value was debatable and up for analysis and discussion as the years treated it, as well as Kelly’s own following work.  Well, his following work, Southland Tales (2006) and now The Box, really tell of a flash in the proverbial pan.

Adapted from a short story by the notable sci-fi writer Richard Matheson (I Am Legend (2007)), The Box is a strange, largely very bad extended Twilight Zone episode played out in a period setting more apt to the science fiction of the film.  Kelly puts a lot of his own life into the story.  The film is set in his own native Virginia of 1976.  And Kelly’s father worked at NASA’s Viking program (as is the main character) and his mother was afflicted with a weird disfigurement due to over-exposure to X-rays (as is the main character’s wife).

So we have this weirdly personal version of mid-20th century science fiction fear of apocalypse, loaded to the max with set design (particularly the decor of the family home) a little outsized to the film.

The story is of a husband and wife who are approached by a highly disfigured Frank Langella with a “box” and a proposition.  The box has a button.  If they push the button, someone somewhere in the world dies, and they get $1,000,000 cash, no tax.  The idea is that this is a moral dilemma, posed to them artificially, yet meant to be deeply significant bearing on humanity.  People, you see, are greedier than they are righteous.  And the film’s take on morality is a high-handed and problematic righteousness that does beg questions of who exactly determines what is morally right and what is morally wrong?

It’s not as poignant as the best of this type of science fiction can be, though I don’t know if that is Matheson’s fault or simply the change of historical perspective or Kelly’s, but since it’s Kelly’s baby to make this a relevant and worthwhile endeavor for the 21st century, let’s blame him.  And Cameron Diaz, for her merits, is really a poorly cast actress here.  Her acting is flabby and  she seems miscast.  But the whole film is a dull wreck.

The film verges constantly on the edge of epic badness.  And it’s a shame that it tipped neither way, towards decency or towards hilarity, which is the crime of the marginally bad films.  True badness is greater than semi-badness.   But this film will probably not help several careers herein.  What Kelly manages to do now…it’ll be interesting to see, but I’ve got to think that he’s really got little left of value for our viewing pleasure and/or enlightenment.