Pushing the Wrong Buttons

Years ago, sci-fi writer Richard Matheson wrote a short story called "Button, Button" that had some buzz about it. During the 80s incarnation of The Twilight Zone, the story became the basis of a 20-minute segment that was one of the more well-received pieces on the show. (This despite the fact that Matheson loudly criticized the alternate ending given to the TV version of his story.)

Last year, the story was adapted again into the feature length movie, The Box. This time, the man behind Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly, was directing and writing. My opinion of that movie was mixed at best, so that wasn't really what attracted my curiosity. Really, I wondered how anyone could manage to take such a simple idea, inherently only about 20 minutes of screen time long, and expand it into a two-hour film.

The core idea is very straightforward. A married couple has a mysterious man show up on their doorstep with a simple wooden box with a button on top. Push the button, and two things will happen. The couple will receive some large amount of money. (The exact amount depends on inflation and shifting ideas of what constitutes a "large amount of money," depending on when the story is being told.) Secondly, someone whom they do not know will die. Can you live with the knowledge that you're responsible for a stranger's death with money to console your guilt? (Well... that's not really the message of the story. The true message depends on whether you're talking about the original short story, or The Twilight Zone version.)

Anyway, that's really all there is to it. So how do you get two hours out of it? By jumping off the tracks into Crazy Town. The Box takes its cues from the plot of The Twilight Zone incarnation of Button, Button, injecting odd details like setting the tale in the mid-1970s; making the woman (played by Cameron Diaz) have a disfigured foot after a childhood accident; making the man (played by James Marsden) a NASA engineer who worked on the cameras of the Viking space probe that went to Mars; and by making the "mysterious man" (played by Frank Langella) into some ghastly maybe-a-zombie, maybe-possessed, maybe-an-actual-Martian freak.

Despite these oddities, the film is actually rather effective and tense for a while, even though anyone who knows the story isn't going to be surprised. (Nor, for that matter, would anyone with half a brain to anticipate where the plot is going.) It's kind of cool, sort of suspenseful, and mostly interesting.

Then, about one hour into the movie, the whole of the story, as told before, is finished. And from there things get really, really weird, as I probably should have expected from the man who made Donnie Darko. Legions of zombie-like "employees" of the Mysterious Man start stalking the couple. Weird alien technology is used to cause havoc. A new dilemma is presented to the couple that is somehow supposed to one-up the drama and trauma of the first one, but just seems like a bridge too far. The movie stops making any effort at making any sense.

Before it's all over, any "hey, this actually isn't too bad" goodwill I felt during the first half has been foolishly squandered. It basically winds up being half of a good movie. And so, not surprisingly, I rate it a C+. (Middle of the road, with a "plus" for Frank Langella, who remains effectively creepy even as his part grows more absurd.) Those who can do without the trappings of visual effects would be better advised to seek out the original short story and read that.