Richard Kelly, who wrote and directed Donnie Darko, is behind The Box, and it is essentially another confusing, metaphysical period piece filled with sci-fi sensibilities and half-formed ideas powered by lofty ambitions. Whilst Donnie Darko worked because it integrated this into a story that was essentially about teenage angst and romance, The Box has no such anchoring narrative. As such it drifts into the absurd, feeling inconsistent, incomprehensible and worst of all tedious.

Set in 1976, The Box follows the financially troubled family of a NASA scientist (a character based on the life and work of Kelly’s own father if IMDB is to be believed, and played by James Marsden) whose wife (Cameron Diaz) receives a visit from a disfigured stranger bearing a gift. That gift is a box with a button in it, and instructions on its use. She is told that if the button is pressed within 24 hours someone the couple do not know will die, and for their trouble they’ll receive $1 million. The pair consider what to do for most of the allotted time period, and then eventually press it minutes before the deadline. They get their money, but a chain of events is set in motion that leads to the destruction of their lives.

The premise sounds fine for a Hollywood thriller. It has multiple moral dilemma and themes of family protection, personal sacrifice and the evils of money all working together, and for the first half an hour it feels like something good could come of it. Then everything gets vague. The plot starts twisting, turning and shrivelling like a sweet wrapper on a hot flame. It borrows ideas from innumerable films and then fails to follow through. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Being John Malkovich meets The Manchurian Candidate, and from these elements a kind of bland, thin cinematic vichyssoise is produced. This tangential approach makes the film to outstay its welcome, and even though you will want to find out what happens in the end, the conclusion is one of the most unsatisfying in the history of film. Which is something at least.

On a positive note, the music is excellent and quite often funny. It is performed in a kind of melodramatic style that you might expect to find on a 70s TV show, and for all I know it could have been transplanted from such a show for this precise reason. The costumes and cars all look good to, but that doesn’t really make the film any better.

If you liked Donnie Darko for its deliberately cryptic plot, then there is a chance that you will enjoy what The Box has to offer. Everyone else will probably be irritated and dissatisfied with is rambling pointlessness. There’s no real message, and by the conclusion it feels as though everyone making it shrugged their shoulders and said ‘that’ll do’.

I also saw A Serious Man this week, which for some reason had a delayed release in my neck of the woods. Nick Clarke has already reviewed it in depth, so check out his review here. I can only add my own recommendation of the Cohen’s latest picture. Leave The Box alone and go and see A Serious Man instead.