Movie review: The Box

The Box

2 of 5 stars

Just about anything is possible in the 1976 world of “The Box.” A strange mix of amputated toes, nosebleeds, “employees,” morality, Mars and potential alien embodiment should really trip the audience out. But with so much to work with, director Richard Kelly drops the box.

Norma (Cameron Diaz) and husband Arthur (James Marsden) live a seemingly happy life outside D.C. in 1976. Their son, Walter (Sam Oz Stone), even brushes his teeth without being asked. He attends the private school his mother works at, and Arthur works for NASA. But the seams of their innocent life come undone when Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), a missing, potentially dead, come-back-to-life scientist, offers them the cash opportunity they desperately need, if only they  will press a button to kill someone else. Cue the dramatic music.

I don’t know which part is less believable: the ability of Steward to control people and raise time- traveling waters or the fact that this family really needs that million dollars that desperately.

Norma notes that it’s a bit too early for Arthur to have a mid-life crisis as he drives away in his Mustang. Either way, audiences across the country should roll their eyes at the inability to convey any convincing acting, directing or life to make us buy into this bedlam. Diaz is so slow to the punch it’s painful, and Kelly’s pandemonium with little cause and value dampers the unsustainable plot.

Most of the detail that is weaved into the storyline ends up being unnecessary. Good teaser details that trick the audience into wandering down all the wrong paths make a good movie. But the audience shouldn’t be gasping for breath, peeved and disappointed at the end, either.

A poorly orchestrated weave of bizarre occurrences does not make a film good. Instead, it just it makes it plain old annoying. Kelly just didn’t know where to stop with this one. Translating a 10-page short story to a two-hour conundrum proves unlikely and challenging. It’s too bad they even tried.