Boxed In

The Box, starring Cameron Diaz, flopped last year. I finally caught it and can see why. It really had no chance from the start.

It's written and directed by Richard Kelly, who made the overpraised Donnie Darko in 2001 and the all but unreleasable Southland Tales in 2007 (pausing to write the incomprehensible Domino in 2005). But I don't want to blame Kelly--the concept was what killed it.

The movie is based on a short story "Button, Button," by the great Richard Matheson. Here's the plot, and pardon the spoilers.:

A married woman in a couple strapped for cash gets a mysterious visitor. He gives her a box with a button and tells her if she presses the button, she'll get a lot of cash but someone she doesn't know will die.  Ultimately the wife pushes the button. The husband is killed in a fake accident and she receives the insurance money. Then she's told she never really knew him.

It was adapted for the 1980s Twilight Zone, with a new ending. After she pushes the button, the stranger takes the box back and tells the wife it will be brought to a person whom she doesn't know, suggesting she's next on the death list.

I thought both versions worked, but the key was it's a small story. A stranger, a box, a wife, the money, a death. That's about it. Not enough for a feature. The stranger in the movie, played by Frank Langella with a CGIed face wound, is the front man for an interstellar conspiracy. He's got numerous employees whom the leads keep running into. Both the NSA and NASA are involved. (It takes place in the 1970s, by the way.) Cameron Diaz gets a new foot. The husband goes through a water gateway to salvation. The couple's son is kidnaped. Other people are killed. Humanity is being experimented upon. Basically, it's a mess.

Kelly tries to graft a whole different plot to a very simple story, but it doesn't take. Someone, somewhere along the line should have said this isn't working, before the audience got to.