SCI-FI; M, 1hr 55min
STARRING: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella

The premise of this provocative sci-fi thriller is based on the 1970 Richard Matheson short story turned The Twilight Zone episode, "Button, Button," and it’s a grabber: in 1976, struggling Virginians Arthur Lewis, a NASA techie, and his teacher wife, Norma (Marsden and Diaz, both toned way down) receive an early-morning delivery of a mysterious metal box. It's designed by a horribly burnt yet impeccably distinguished man (Langella, snakeskin-smooth) who later drops by the Lewis house to offer Norma $US1 million tax-free cash to press a button in the box's glass-domed lid. If she does so, a stranger will die.

In an express trip to the wild side, life as the Lewises know it is obliterated. Dead-straight strangeness was always mandatory in the Zone and, while working his way through the accumulating David Lynch–tinged weirdness of his screenplay, director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales) maintains a sombre mood. And so he should, for at the core of the wiggy extraterrestrial shenanigans lies the kind of urgent moral question that defines both head-scratcher sci-fi and classic human tragedy.
Andiee's Rating: ****