Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2010

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A financially struggling young couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) is presented with a mysterious box by a dignified, horribly disfigured (struck by lightning) and clearly very rich man (Frank Langella), and told that if they simply push the little red button on the top of the box within 24 hours, they will receive, tax-free, 1 million dollars. Cash. But there’s a catch: someone will die. Someone they don’t know. What would you do? It’s an intriguing story, but unfortunately it started out as an intriguing short story (“Button, Button” by Richard Matheson, frequent contributor to The Twilight Zone), and its expansion into nearly two hours has made it a bit ungainly, with numerous explanations and subplots interfering with its elegance and raising more questions than they answer. Remarkably, though, Richard Kelly’s curiously haunting third film manages to keep its head above all this complex narrative debris (maybe that’s Kelly’s talent) and retains enough of that surreal Donnie Darko voodoo to make it well worth seeing. The director ratchets up the tension even as he piles on the exposition, and it kept my attention throughout.