Richard Kelly made a big impression with his first feature, Donnie Darko and then began digging a hole for himself.  The first misfire was the Donnie Darko Director's Cut, a version of his film that explained all the mystery and dulled the edge of nearly everything good about the original.  The second misfire was the inscrutable tragedy of Southland Tales.  I sat through a short question and answer session with Kelly after an advance screening of the movie and it sounded like the film's lack of focus and sprawling, dense narrative was a product of his writing process.  There are enough good ideas in Southland Tales to make a good movie, and the film is certainly interesting if a little un-watchable, but it fails in so many important ways that I wondered if Kelly was going to make it back to directing.

The Box could have been a simple, tiny movie based on the short story Button, Button that was also turned into a Twilight Zone episode in the 1980s.  The premise doesn't require worm holes, dopplegangers, time travel, or anything too out of the ordinary.  In fact, the film could have easily gone down the Tell Tale Heart path where there's nothing going on outside of the characters' minds.  Instead, Kelly takes the simple idea of a button that when pushed has one positive and one negative consequence, and he complicates it almost to the breaking point.  Somehow the box ties into NASA, the NSA, a mission to Mars, and yes, a worm hole.

Honestly, I would have been a little disappointed if the movie didn't somehow work in a worm hole sequence, and yet I'm glad it stopped short of a man in a bunny suit.  There is no occular trauma in The Box but Frank Langella does walk around with half of his face melted off which is effectively creepy.  Kelly thankfully dialed back the stunt casting, the meta-film commentary, and the narrative outlandishness of Southland Tales with his new effort, but he couldn't simply make a psychological thriller.  It's strange to me that Kelly doesn't see that the psychological drama inherent in some of his ideas is enough for a compelling story; that the scope of the movie doesn't have to get so broad that it requires 'answer man' scenes that explain what's going on.  I genuinely liked the places where The Box went, but when the story focused more on its own intricate plot mechanics than on the characters and how they deal with the situation, it seemed to lose focus.

Still, Kelly managed to squeeze a lot of tension and creepy drama out of The Box.  The music is fantastic, the film is shot with a soft focus to make the period-specific details look more authentic, the design is spot-on, the performances are uniformly good, and the seemingly-random moments all have a purpose.  It seems that every time the protagonists turn around there is someone staring at them, following them, or telling them something crazy with a nosebleed.  All of that works wonderfully well.  When Kelly is dropping quotes from Arthur C. Clarke and Sartre, the movie kind of gets dumber than it needs to be, but it's still a worthwhile ride.  I hope he can bring back some of the mystery and ambiguity of his first feature and pair it with the film-making chops he shows here.