AT THE MOVIES - Eerie sci-fi plot makes 'The Box' worthwhile

*** "The Box"

On a scale of one to weird, writer/director Richard Kelly succeeds in out-Shyamalaning his contemporaries with his eccentric, head-scratching sci-fi thriller "The Box." Luckily for Kelly, his inflated take on a 1970 Richard Matheson short story (later adapted into an episode of "The Twilight Zone" in 1986) doesn't drown in its own absurdity like M. Night Shyamalan's tree-hugging 2008 swill, "The Happening."

Kelly is no stranger to all things moody and idiosyncratic; this is the same guy who introduced us to Jake "I wish I could quit you" Gyllenhaal and cinema's second creepiest rabbit costume ever ("The Shining" wins by a hare) in his 2001 time-travel clusterfutz, "Donnie Darko ."

Kelly knows when to pause, when to enforce a close-up, and when to cue his creepy extras, thereby, our director is better at summoning Hitchcock than Shyamalan could ever hope to be. But an invocation is not a manifestation - only Hitchcock does Hitchcock best - so with every plentiful moody pause, framed portrait and plot flourish, Kelly risks a sad plummet into his own aloof self-indulgence. It's a thin rope, but our director makes it across.

We meet happily married, but financially strapped, Virginian parents Norma and Arthur (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) in 1976, as they awake early one morning to a doorbell ring and a mysterious package left at their front door. Enclosed in a cardboard box upon their front steps is a wooden box with a big red button and a note informing the couple that they will be called upon by a stranger in the early evening. As the two go on with their daily routines, he at NASA working on the Viking Mars probe camera, she at a private school teaching English, they return home to meet the peculiar, heavily scarred courier, Arlington Steward (Frank Langella).

Steward informs the two that if they were to push the red button in the box within 24 hours they would receive a payment of $1 million at the expense of someone they don't know dying instantly upon a single button push. A simple concept and a weighty challenge for our main characters to endure, as an hour and a half worth of consequences, Hollywood-weened tension and smattered action follows. Steady mulling segues into motion, eventually segueing into the kind of sci-fi outlandishness that Nicholas Cage lives for.

A film weighted on its main couple's chemistry has nothing to worry about with leads Diaz and Marsden, (Marsden plays well with most of his co-stars, anyway) as the two never seem wooden in their interactions, even as Diaz works to spit out a sticky Virginian drawl.

Due to his devil-purr demeanor, Langella is well-suited as a baddie, and every plain-faced extra is fit to scare. Also scary? The wide collars, patterned kerchiefs and loud wallpaper of the 1970s; the decade itself seems to exude its own element of creepiness in a movie working to up the uneasiness ante every other scene.

Kelly pushes in more than he lets go, with a moral and metaphorical payoff and great big reveal seen many movies prior. Those who've paid close attention to the full trailer might be spoiled by some plot-unraveling dialogue (edited from the final cut) but Kelly plays it vague from beginning to end, regardless of exposed structure.

Ambiguous dips, lapses and holes become a commonplace - if not mildly frustrating - exercise in patience, with a second act that is all over the place, but still engaging enough to command attention. And even with a predictable turn of events, some shaky allegory at play, and a storyline that feels like it was written for a science fiction series, Kelly still offers up a film that may not be lovable, but it is worth, at the very least, a second viewing.

- Now playing at CinemaWorld, Lincoln, 622 George Washington Highway, 401-333-8676, cinemaworldonline.com .