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The first hour of the film more or less plays out like the 20 minutes of the TV version with distinctly different characters foreshadowing some of the events which are to come later on in the film's second hour. The second half of the film feels a bit uncomfortably grafted onto the original story. To say that it's muddled wouldn't really give the second half full credit for being the colossally convoluted mess that it is. A premise that involves NASA, the NSA, the Viking 1 Mars lander, a weird cult of people with nosebleeds, light, water and hazy religious overtones is one that has not only departed from the elegant simplicity of the original premise but also run off manically screaming into a shadowy world of vague, lazily-defined mystery. The story in the second half could have theoretically been compelling if it were fleshed out as a completely different film and relieved of a few overly expository bits of dialogue.

It's pretty clear that the director is TRYING to expand on the strange questions of morality that lie at the heart of the source material and the 1980s TV adaptation that it inspired, but it doesn't ever really resolve into anything coherent. This is a pity, as Marsden and Diaz actually manage some really compelling moments onscreen. The attempt to expand on the deal outlined in the initial premise with a final offer involving a gun, a homicide and the couple's son seems terribly misjudged. Langella ends up coming across like a perverted Monty Hall. The whole thing ends in a kind of mystery that seems at least vaguely interesting, but there's been so much rendered in the story beyond the initial premise that the mystery is completely robbed of any intensity at all. The film takes a really interesting premise and completely robs it of the magic and poetry that made it so interesting to begin with.

The Verdict

Richard Matheson's original premise was brilliantly crafted, but poorly executed in his original short story. He didn't like the way he was forced to change it for the 1987 TV adaptation, but it was a far better treatment of the story than the one he had come up with. That being said, it would be difficult to imagine Matheson liking the current film adaptation either, as it is an even bigger departure from the original. Given the opportunity to expand on the TV version, Richard Kelly runs in too many directions with the story, attempting to graft ideas and premises to it that really have no place being there. Judging from the tiny exposure the film is receiving and the fact that it opened the same week as a giant, rubbery Disney film, The Box is not destined to be remembered all that well. It may end up being easier to track down a copy of the old Twilight Zone TV episode, which is just as well. It's the best treatment of the premise that may ever get produced in any format.

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