This movie is batshit.

It’s based on a short story from Richard Matheson, the source of the orignal “I Am Legend”. The original short story is called “Button, Button” and it’s less of a movie-in-waiting than a Twilight Zone episode, which it was successfully turned into in the middle eighties somewhere. You can check it out on Google Books to get the flavor.

In the story, a mysterious stranger gives a struggling couple a box that contains a button. He tells them that if they press this button they will receive 50K in cash, but someone they do not know will die. Norma gives in while her husband is out, and she gets his life insurance policy for the full 50K. And here’s the swerve in all its simple, middlebrow glory:

“You said I wouldn’t know the one that died!”
“My dear lady,” Mr. Steward said, “do you really think you knew your husband?”

So someone decided that 2009 would be a good time to turn this ten or so page story into a full-length feature film. They increased the cash on offer to a cool million, gave the couple a child and then took a hard left toward crazytown. Somehow, from this simple story of human dignity in the face of temptation the filmmakers manage to rope in the CIA, the NSA, NASA and some kind of aliens. They manage to add zombies, and water coffins for good measure. This is a film that runs in a dozen unsatisfying directions at once, and when it ends, it drops off a cliff without resolving much of anything. It’s simultaneously far too busy and crashingly empty.

There’s probably still an interesting way to explore Matheson’s question in a feature film, but this film fails to do it. Listing its faults would take too long, so I’ll just suggest that you not bother to see it. If it was possible for me to punch a movie in the brain, I would most certainly punch “The Box.”

Here’s the cheesy but mercifully short “Twilight Zone” version – it’s not too great either, but it will save you 11 bucks a ticket and an hour or so of your life.