The Box

Director: Richard Kelly

Cast: Cameron Diaz, James Madden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn, Holmes Osborne

Genre: Sci-if/Mystery/Thriller 2009

Running time: 116 mins. 

Rating:★★½

Push a red button on a little black box, get a million bucks cash. Just like that, all of Norma and Arthur Lewis's financial problems will be over. But there's a catch, according to the strange visitor ( Frank Langella) who placed the box on the couple's doorstep. Someone somewhere, someone they don't know, will die. Cameron Diaz and James Madden play a couple confronted by agonizing temptation yet unaware they're already part of an orchestrated and, for them and us, mind blowing chain of events. 

It's set in 1976, Cameron Diaz is in it, and there's a mysterious box dropped off at 5:45 AM exactly, oh yeah, this is a recipe for a stellar film. I get more excited when my alarm clock goes off! Oh! Oh! Before one forgets, it's set in Virginia, which means Cameron Diaz with a Southern accent and apparently missing four of her toes on her right foot?

One has to wonder early on in the film, though, the subtraction of Norma's usual discount and Arhur's rejection on his astronaut application wasn't predictably deliberate ploy to get the couple tempted to push that red button. Well, no shit! Phew, glad that mystery was solved. The only thing this movie has going for it is Frank Langella's performance and the grotesquely C.G.I. that disfigured half of his character's face so fantastically glorious. Then the next obvious question, are the "someone"s who die, once connected to the pressing of that same red button and the same offer of one million dollars? Perhaps, but why? Is it a government experiment or an aliens's experiment?

The film is, however, posing and exploring an interesting psychological question of what are we willing to do to get the "prize," when there maybe a terrific consequence in return. A consequence that we have no control or choice over. Or do we?