Arthur and Norma (James Marsden and Cameron Diaz) fail to achieve career goals, lose a scholarship for their son to private school, and have a box delivered to their front door, all withintwenty-four hours. A disfigured man (Frank Langella) tells them that if they press the button in the box, they'll get a million dollars. That sounds pretty appealing to the couple in desperate need of some goodnews.Unfortunately, the side effect is that someone they don't know will die. This is the latest Richard Matheson story to be turned into a movie, for those who enjoyed the moral discussions in I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come.

I'd have to recommend this one to fans of Fringe, too. We're told reasonably early on that NASA is involved, as Arthur works there and extraterrestrial life is explored. We're thrown into a murky soup of aliens (potentially), mind control, human experimentation, life after death, and more science fiction-related stuff that sort of colors and distorts the real main vein of the story. Frankly, it doesn't matter to me what the "cause" is or what the "explanation" is: it's about the choices we make and the impact they have, as well as what it really means to be human.

In the decision-making department, we're always faced with choices, right? Regardless of the decisions that Arthur and Norma are faced with, they continue to have a sequence of choices about what they value, what matters, and what they should do to fix the sequence of situations they cause themselves. Because they're married and they have a son, it's about figuring out how to be good spouses and determine what it means to be good parents. Unfortunately, Matheson's tale is set up by delivering the bad news that the wrong decisions are made. Temptation causes things to fall apart, as humans fail to choose wisely.

On the flip side, there is some degree of self-sacrifice that makes the story stand out in the end. Norma is a compassionate human being who relates to others thanks to her own physical shortcoming, but the forces of evil are numerous here. The wrap-up is as mindbending as the premise, coming full circle on decisions made, and the costs of sinful choices. It's open-ended though, and it leaves you grasping for some sign that the cycle can be broken. I was depressed for days after seeing I Am Legend because of the cost of "salvation," but that was still more hopeful than this tale of choices. It leaves me wondering what our landscape would look like without Jesus, or how someone today who looks at the world with an eye for the "higher power" but doesn't hold any religion to be true sees the world we live in.

The Box is the story of a world where people are constantly making the wrong decision, and they don't get what they thought they would when they sell out their "good morals." It's the story of the wrath of an Old Testament god (no higher power is named here... I'm just saying) who sends his agents of death and destruction to lay judgment on an unsuspecting humanity... and humanity fails miserably.