Kelly has been passing off The Box as his stab at a commercial feature—an attempt to salvage his career after the critical and commercial disaster of Southland Tales. He can use his illusions, but whether as a stealth project or because he knows no other way of making movies, what he’s delivered is a Richard Kelly film: moody, sinister, packed with references to TV cheese and—for a while, at least—perfectly happy to throw logic to the wind.

Those familiar with Kelly’s sensibility won’t be surprised to learn that he draws inspiration not only from the Richard Matheson doodle “Button, Button”—the movie’s purported source—but also from its 1986 adaptation for the new Twilight Zone. (He nods to the endings of both versions, then proceeds in a direction that’s ineffably his.) A drawling Diaz stars as Norma Lewis, a high school teacher with an unlikely specialty in existentialism, whose life basically went downhill after her foot was destroyed in an X-ray accident. Marsden is her husband, Arthur, a NASA scientist who seems to spend most of his time designing a prosthesis for Norma and who’s barred from space travel after he flunks a psychology test.

Of course, he’s about to do that again. Norma is visited by Arlington Steward (Langella), a dapper salesman-like figure with part of his face missing, which creates eerie symmetries with Norma’s wallpaper. The couple has found a device on their doorstep: Steward explains that if they push the button within 24 hours, somebody they don’t know will die. In exchange, Norma and her husband will receive one million dollars, which would certainly help to pay tuition for their son (Stone).

Needless to say, they push the plunger, and the horrors do not end. Even baseline reality is pretty strange in Kelly’s films, where supermarkets provoke run-ins with conspirators and desk lamps exude a radioactive glow, but The Box is at its most entertaining as the director limns Norma and Arthur’s journey down the rabbit hole. A wedding party sequence is a spectacular set piece of grimacing codgers, overdressed yobs and menacing students flashing peace signs; it ends with the couple getting into their car to find “No Exit” scrawled in a dusting of snow on their windshield.

Then things get weird. As Steward’s minions separately stalk Arthur and Norma through the library—an interlude as inexplicable as anything in Southland Tales (those bugged by that movie may wish to take a pass)—it’s hard not to picture a Warner exec having conniptions. In its unexplored avenues and refusal of payoff, the sequence suggests the footage for a long-lost David Lynch pilot, at least until Kelly starts quoting 2001.

Southland Tales imagined—or perhaps reflected—a world where porn stars become political pundits and soldiers turn into pop stars. (It was best seen in a multiplex, where it would play after a music video hyping the Marines.) Closer to conventional Twilight Zone allegory, The Box, which name-checks the NSA and alludes to The Parallax View, is essentially a film about surveillance: It evokes the fear of having someone watch you, but—more perversely—it also flips that notion on its head, suggesting that we have a responsibility to watch out for each other. The button becomes a tool for seeing whether individuals will do unto their neighbors as they would have done unto them.

To rationalize how Steward’s gadget works, the movie cites Arthur C. Clarke’s third law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” If only the film were content to leave the explanations at that. Perhaps as his one concession to commerciality, Kelly this time opts to tie most of his loose end ends together, and the more he reveals, the more benign The Box becomes.

The last half-hour deflates faster than a Jake Gyllenhaal bubble. Kelly the crypto-religious moralist is not as fun as Kelly the fratboy philosopher, but there’s little doubt that he’s an auteur. Set in 1976, the year after Kelly was born (and nodding to Carter’s election just as Donnie Darko alluded to Bush-Dukakis), the film may ultimately be about the trust children place in their parents. When they’re deciding whether to push the button, a question is raised: What if the person who dies is a baby?

Nervy, personal and possibly career-ending, The Box boasts more than enough psychodrama for a cult classic. It’s a shame that Kelly sealed the lid so tight.

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