Pushing her buttons: Cameron Diaz in The Box

Directed by Richard Kelly. Starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, James Rebhorn, Holmes Osborne, Sam Oz Stone. 15A cert, gen release, 115 min

Richard Kelly's slick thriller is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that goes absolutely nowhere, writes DONALD CLARKE

WASN'T RICHARD Kelly supposed to be the next David Lynch? On the evidence of Southland Tales, his near-notorious pre-apocalyptic epic, and, now, this paranoid exercise in creative perplexity, he is about as likely to become the next Bette Lynch. Donnie Darkoseems like an awfully long time ago.

On paper, The Box looks like an attempt to get back to basics after the extravagance of the Southland Talesfiasco. We think, perhaps, of Darren Aronofsky when he made the stripped-down The Wrestlerafter directing the fussy The Fountain. The Boxis, after all, based on a gorgeously neat, properly spooky little story by Richard Matheson.

One day, a couple is visited by a mysterious individual who makes them a troubling offer: if they push the button on this box, then one person – somebody they do not know – will die, and they will receive $1 million in a snug attache case. It's WW Jacobs's The Monkey's Pawflavoured with phrases from the Ferris wheel speech in The Third Man.

Cameron Diaz and James Marsden play the recipients of the box: respectively, a teacher and a NASA employee. Frang Langella, wearing Harvey Dent's face from The Dark Knight, is the peculiar visitor. Events take place in a particularly ochre version of the 1970s.

Tweak the story a bit and you have the makings of a brief, economical shocker. Sadly, Kelly has approached the material like a distracted child intent upon finding the answers to questions that don’t really matter. Who is the man really? Why does he make the offer? How does the box work? How will the strangers die? Oh, for goodness sake, who cares?

The answers Kelly comes up with rapidly drag us into a world of alien visitation, government cover-up and adolescent existentialism that is worryingly reminiscent – though not quite so barmy – as the universe of Southland Tales.

The three principals are on good form (Langella in particular), the art direction is luscious, and there are some good dark twists about the place. However, after the first hour the plot becomes so tediously entangled that no sane person could be bothered trying to make sense of it. Worst of all, Kelly totally bungles the killer payoff from the original story.

The core of The Boxis, thus, a joke with no punch line. What a waste.