Based on a short story by Richard Matheson called “Button, Button”, Richard Kelly’s film certainly presents the viewer with an intriguing premise. A mysterious stranger (Frank Langella, surely a shoo-in for the next Bond villain on the basis of this performance) turns up at a suburban couple’s home with a plain wooden box and a proposition: should they choose to press the button on the box, they will receive a million dollars. But the offer comes at a price: in pressing the button they will be sentencing a person they don't know - just someone, somewhere - to death.

The first 40 minutes of The Box unfold more than elegantly, tapping into that vein of quiet, suburban horror that The Twilight Zone excelled at (Matheson’s story was actually adapted as an episode in the series’ 1980s incarnation) while referencing the best of the 1970s cinema of paranoia in its long takes and subdued colour palette. But things start to unravel quite swiftly as Kelly literally loses the plot, building on Matheson’s original material only to veer off into a tangle of storylines which only get more incongruous as they unfold. Aliens, zombies, nosebleeds, water portals... Kelly throws everything, no matter how ludicrous, into the pot. The result is that what could have been a brilliant excursion into the human condition and its moral dilemmas ends up as a boring, senseless mishmash of Stargate and The X-Files.

Surprisingly, as you pray for the film to reach its conclusion, something strange happens. In its final 20 minutes, The Box redeems itself - if only marginally - by ditching the carnival of weirdos and special effects and re-addressing the reason the original premise held such intrigue. But by then, most viewers will have walked out, or wished they could do what only viewers of the future DVD release will be able to: switch off The Box.