Allow me to tell my war stories. In 2001 we had a movie theater behind a Cajun pizza parlor which ran midnight screenings of a film my friend Peter described as 2001: A Space Odyssey meets The Breakfast Club. That movie was Donnie Darko.
A rare film that feels important in an almost spiritual way, Darko is also incredibly entertaining. Then came Richard Kelly’s self-defeating director’s cut and the ambitious but ill-formed Southland Tales. Maybe he wasn’t a genius after all?
Basing his next film on a Richard Matheson short story (which, yes, was adapted for a Twilight Zone episode) seemed a great way to reel it in. The first forty-five minutes does stay straightforward and (in the best possible sense of the word) conventional. Then all kinds of crazy break out.
The Philosophy 101 set-up – push a button to achieve great wealth, but someone “you don’t know” will die – spins into a bizarre inter-dimensional conspiracy that makes just enough sense to get you from scene to scene. The incomprehensible plot lays beneath the surface – and away from our lead characters – almost as an opt in for more enthusiastic audience members. One need not be taking notes, or on psilocybin, to get this picture, but the (square, liquid) gateway is there for those who want to take the trip.
Kelly excels at creating scenes of existential dread from mundane situations. Flipping TV channels, waiting for a school bus, looking in on a party from a porch are all shot through that ominous this-is-so-unscary-it-is-scary lens used to perfection in films like The Shining or the early work of David Cronenberg.
Detractors may call them narrative red herrings, but I salute anything that finds ways to highlight such nerdy signifiers as Clarke’s Third Law, the suddenly hip Carl Sagan, the mighty solo from Derek and the Dominoes’ “Bell Bottom Blues,” H. Beam Piper’s “Day of the Moron,” the opening theme from What’s Happening!! and phrases like “the altruism coefficient.” When an edge-of-seat sequence is set at an old fashioned flatbed editing machine in a public library, the old school cineaste dweeb in me nearly dropped dead from excitement.
Despite some rumblings about Cameron Diaz’ Southern accent, her performance is fine, though I would like to hear from feminists on the fact that [SPOILERS!!] only women are shown pushing the button. James Marsden is good, too, as the NASA worker whose involvement in the Mars Viking missions may or may not have connection to his problems.
Best, though, is Frank Langella, looking spiffy in a derby hat even if half his face is chewed off Harvey Dent style. Kelly shoots him in a variety of fascinating angles, including one that doesn’t highlight the grossness of the exposed musculature, but simply the absence of face. This less-is-more moment is one of the creepiest in the whole film.
All told, though, The Box is a simple morality tale and, as such, is somewhat predictable. In situations like this, the audience is the goalie and the filmmaker is the penalty kicker – there are only so many directions to go. Viewers who dig spooky sci-fi will find enough to sink their teeth into on they way to its (somewhat) obvious conclusion.
