The movies of Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) are an acquired taste.

We're still chewing.

Kelly's newest film is The Box, a slow, creepy, somewhat confusing stroll into interesting moral territory.

Interesting moral territory does not a movie make, alas.

The story, such as it is, is set in Virginia in 1976. It's the time of Viking 1 and Mars exploration, and NASA's Langley Research Centre is the big local employer. Cue the futuristic, space-age, wavy-gravy '70s vibe.

Cameron Diaz and James Marsden star here as Norma and Arthur Lewis, a couple with one son. Arthur works at Langley and hopes to be accepted into the astronaut program; Norma teaches at a local private school. They have financial problems.

In this world, physical weirdness and deformity abound. Some people get unexplained nosebleeds. Others are just strange looking, and it's not merely their '70s clothes. Even Diaz has a mangled foot. It's all so ... unsettling.

Biggest deformity of all belongs to a Mr. Steward (Frank Langella) whose missing about half his face. He was hit by lightning. Mr. Steward is a mysterious guy who turns up at Arthur and Norma's house to give them a gift of a box.

It's not just any box. This box has a big red button in it. Press the button, and you get $1 million cash -- but some stranger somewhere dies. Small detail to be overcome.

Arthur is horrified by the entire deal. Norma is inclined to talk about it, at least.

While they engage in their classic good vs. evil tussle, the world around them gets weirder by the minute. More people get mysterious nosebleeds. Homicide increases in the neighbourhood, but all the parties involved were, curiously, employed on the Viking Mars project. The city looks bleached with fear. Why is the library so weird? What's going on over there at the Galaxy Motel, anyway?

And so on.

The Box is slow and intriguing and it inspires unease; all that atmosphere keeps you watching for about 90 minutes, but after that it's just dull. It's the sort of film you hold up with your hopes until there's just no avoiding disappointment. The movie plays like a shaggy dog story, and for far too long.

It has some interesting things to look at. The Box is not only set in the '70s but appears to have been filmed then, too -- there's a flatness about the colour of everything and the special effects are wildly cheesy. It's different.

It's just not $12.50 worth of different.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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