Richard Kelly made his feature film debut with DONNIE DARKO in 2001, a weird and smart little movie than won lots of awards, became a cult movie over night, and made Jake Gyllenhaal a star.

    I wasn't alone waiting for his next movie - which unfortunately turned out to be SOUTHLAND TALES, which premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2006, where it competed in the official selection. Critics called this utterly strange and boring science fiction drama one of the worst movies ever to be screened at Cannes. And yes, SOUTHLAND TALES is awful. I suspect it was some kind of vanity project: because of the success of DONNIE DARKO, a production company gave young director Kelly a huge amount of money he could use any which way he wanted - he's an "artist".

    SOUTHLAND TALES spent a couple of years on the shelf before it went straight to DVD in most of the world. This time, the movie was shortened and re-edited, but still an unwatchable, pretentious mess.

    ...And now Richard Kelly is back on the big screen with THE BOX.

    Writer Richard Matheson is a legend. He's probably best known for his vampire novel I AM LEGEND, which has been filmed three times, but he's written much, much more than that for magazines, TV, movies and more. He wrote a couple of the Roger Corman Poe movies, he wrote for THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, he worked with Dan Curtis on his Dracula adaptation starring Jack Palance, he wrote the story Spielberg's best film ever DUEL was based on, and the novel THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, and... Well, the list goes on and on and on...

    THE BOX is based on Matheson's short story "Button, button" which I haven't read, and I won't speculate in what happens in it. Richard Kelly's version - Kelly also penned the screenplay - takes place in 1976. Cameron Diaz and James Marsden play a married couple who both, the very same day, get very bad news. Diaz has to quit her job as a teacher and Marsden isn't accepted at the astronaut school. Not good - especially since they need money.

    But it doesn't take long before somebody's knocking on the door. Diaz opens and faces - or half-faces? - a mysterious man (Frank Langella) who's missing half his face; due to an accident, he has a big hole in his head (a really cool make up effect, actually). This mysterious man calls himself Arlington Stewart and he has a ver strange offer:

    He hands Diaz a box with a button on it. Then he gives Diaz a choice and 24 hours to decide what to do. If she chooses to press the button, Stewart will give her one million dollars cash. But! Somewhere in the world, somebody she doesn't know will die. If she doesn't press the button, Stewart will come back for the box, leave and she will never see him again.

    Diaz discusses what to do with her husband. They need the money. And this offer is just strange. It can't be anything but a trick. And after opening its bottom, they realize the box is empty. So ... they press the button.

    Up till now, THE BOX is really good. I mean it. It's both thrilling and interesting, like a good Richard Matheson yarn. But they press the button about 30 minutes into the movie.

    Since I haven't read the short story, I don't know what happens in that version when the button is pressed. If we ever learn what happens. If I had written this story, I would have stopped there. This would make a perfect episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. The button triggers our imagination. We don't need to know what happens.

    Unfortunately, Richard Kelly isn't me. He goes on with the story for another 75 minutes - and his movie turns bad. B. A. D. It goes on forever, it becomes silly, and there's metaphysical mumbo jumbo, and it ... My God, Kelly turns it into one of the worst movies of the year! I hated it. I saw it at a preview screening two months ago, and there were a couple of walk-outs during the sceening, and after it, it seemed like everybody hated the damn film. We all agreed that the opening was great, really magnificent. But you can't release just the first third of a movie, or can you? (Well, if I were Kelly, I would have done that, I would have released it as a half hour TV movie with a great ending.)

    Just like SOUTHLAND TALES, THE BOX is a boring and irritating mess. Perhaps Richard Kelly was a one hit wonder. Just like M. Night Shyamalan. Their latest movies have lots in common: pretentious, boring, silly. Hollywood, please stop giving them money!