Combining elements of horror, science fiction, and a kind of religious fantasy, "The Box" unfolds with a familiar challenge right out of the long history of fairy tales, folklore, and legend, an ostensibly simple choice that determines the fortune and future of an individual. A mysterious stranger named Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) calls on Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz), the wife of a NASA engineer, Arthur Lewis (James Marsden), at their home in Richmond, Virginia, offering the couple $1 million in cash, tax free of course, if they press a large button on a peculiar box. The $1 million comes at a price - if the Lewises press the button, they will cause the death of another human being.

The mysterious, badly disfigured Steward carefully spells out to Norma the details of the offer, which the Lewises must act on within 24 hours, stressing above all that their decision will be irrevocable. The opportunity quite naturally creates a terrible moral crisis for the Lewises, who like everybody else would happily accept a million dollars, but as decent human beings also of course hesitate at the notion of killing some innocent person. They debate the issue back and forth until Norma impulsively ends the discussion by pressing the button.

As anyone would expect, that decisive act initiates a sequence of events that not only leads to predictably dire consequences, opening another box - Pandora's - of complicated and puzzling plotting that branches off into many other directions. When the various paths intersect, other people enter the action and the film wanders far from its initial premises into all sorts of strange areas, growing ever more preposterous as it progresses.

Attempting to find information on Steward, Norma and Arthur discover his connection to NASA's Mars project, which Arthur also worked on; he suffered his disfigurement when struck by lightning at the exact moment the NASA robot landed on Mars and sent a communication back to Earth. Steward tells Norma that the lightning and the landing connected in a way that somehow made him the vehicle for extraterrestrial communication from some unknown source.

Their research also leads them to a number of encounters with decidedly creepy people, apparently under Steward's control, who tend to suffer mysterious nosebleeds and hang around staring at the couple like zombies. Hysterical strangers approach them offering confusing advice and various bits of concrete information, leading them ever deeper into the puzzle. At the same time, Steward apparently occupies some odd position at the center of a web that links NASA to a gaggle of government agencies like the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the NSA, as well as to whatever otherworldly force he claims to represent.

As the picture spirals out of control, the Lewises find their world growing stranger and stranger. Both of them, following the clues, wind up at the Richmond Public Library, a forbidding structure inhabited by a host of those zombie-like folks who move in unison, forcing Norma to flee and Arthur to encounter yet another mysterious personage, a woman who shows him three weird pillars of water. Just like a game show contestant, he must select the right pillar to find the portal to salvation or damnation, an act that lands him back in his bed at home and, ridiculously, floods the house.

"The Box" contains much more in the way of plot, character, and subject, and hints at other matters that the filmmaker clearly found impossible to include. The strange fusion of science-fiction and horror, along with its eschatological references, leads the film to keep promising a full conclusion that it never reaches; finally, it rescues a shred of cruel logic with a most unsatisfying and horribly tragic ending.

The lovely Cameron Diaz departs from her usual semi-comic parts to play another film staple, the Distraught Housewife, which forces her into some discomforting, tear-stained hyperbole. Despite the frequent absurdities of the plot, Frank Langella performs with genuine dignity, holding the mess together with remarkable restraint, speaking with precise and elegant diction, conveying a curious combination of the sinister and the avuncular. Mostly because of him, now and then something in this very strange picture actually works.