The Box (2009, USA)

The more I see of Richard' Kelly's post-Donnie Darko work, the more his first film seems like a fluke. Not that The Box is the hot mess that Southland Tales was (and not that Darko was great genius), but the farther out Box spins, the more it falls apart, as Kelly grasps at straws that just aren't there.

Based on Richard Matheson's "Button, Button" short story, Kelly takes a simple moralistic science fiction thriller and attempts to invest it with both an otherworldly sense of purpose and far too many twists to retain my interest, at least. Once it was clear that we were on Kelly's ground (he scripted as well), I was already bored, spurred on to finish the film partly to see if Cameron Diaz could really keep up her horrid Southern accent for a full two hours, and partly out of a self-defeating impulse to see if Kelly could top the metaphysical nonsense of Southland Tales. (Nope. That may well be an impossible feat.) But similar to Southland (and Darko), Kelly's attempts at deep themes are obvious and heavy-handed. Time for him to give up the auteur mantle and bring his visual talent to someone else's script.