Review – The Box

Was this really based on a Richard Matheson story? I haven’t read “Button, Button,” but I have trouble imagining it being as terrible as this movie. The basic premise could have been turned into an acceptably mediocre horror movie. A mysterious stranger shows up at a suburban household with a box that sports a single button. If our heroes push the button, they get a million bucks and somewhere in the world someone dies. However, the copious early references to No Exit should have been a leading indicator that “pointlessly strange” would be the theme for the evening. Before we’re through, we get NASA, the NSA, space aliens, brainwashed minions and no end of expensive, go-nowhere visual tricks stirred into a messy stew with no greater purpose than unfocused paranoia. I went in dreading the cliché conundrum – would you kill someone you didn’t know in exchange for financial security? – but left wishing it had been that simple, straightforward and entertaining. Wish I’d skipped it