Andrew Eaton: The Prompt

THE film The Box is out on DVD tomorrow. If you haven't seen it, give it a chance. It's the kind of movie that restores my faith in Hollywood a little.

Picture the scenario. Director Richard Kelly, having won a significant cult following over the years for his debut, Donnie Darko, proceeds – in most people's eyes – to sabotage his burgeoning career by making Southland Tales, a convoluted, cerebral, frequently bonkers apocalyptic sci-fi film starring, of all people, The Rock and Seann William Scott. The general consensus on the film is that it is a mess, with too many ideas for its own good. It is a disastrous flop.

And yet Kelly, rather than disappearing from view, gets to spend lots more money making The Box, another convoluted, cerebral, frequently bonkers apocalyptic sci-fi film which, to many people, is equally baffling, with too many ideas for its own good.

How did he pull that off? Perhaps because, on paper, The Box was an easier sell. It's about a 1970s couple with money problems (James Marsden and Cameron Diaz), who are visited one day by a mysterious stranger (Frank Langella, with much of his face missing) who gives them a strange wooden box with a big red button on it, and a once-in-a-lifetime offer. Press the button and two things will happen: they will be given $1 million, and someone they don't know will die.

It's a simple, hokey set-up, previously explored in a Twilight Zone episode from 1986. Kelly, though, seems less interested in the set-up itself than he is in creating a whole, surreal world around it – of government conspiracies, magic, Nasa Mars missions, swimming pools that can transport you to another dimension, brainwashed slaves with blood trickling from their noses, and invisible alien "employers". It made me think of an episode of The X-Files directed by David Lynch.

Does The Box make sense? No, in the sense that most of the questions the plot raises are never really answered. Yes, in that, like Lynch's Mulholland Drive, it has its own weird, internal logic, is gripping throughout, and ends by bringing the story full circle in a way that is – on its own terms – very satisfying. It is also beautiful to look at. There is one recurring scene in particular – an establishing shot of a wind tunnel, Langella a tiny, inscrutable figure far away – that looks like a spectacular theatre set.

It's a hokey Hollywood movie. It's also an inspiringly subversive piece of art. I love that it exists. There aren't many movies like it.