MOVIE REVIEW
The Box (2009)

Dale Robinette/Warner Bros. Pictures
The most cynical fans of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” consider 1963 to be the year that the immortal television series jumped the shark, albeit momentarily. In its fourth season, the beloved anthology program expanded its episodes from 30 minutes to a full hour with decidedly mixed results. For every superlative entry, such as the Martin Balsam-starring “The New Exhibit,” that justified the stretched-out running time, that uneven season also gave viewers interminable bores the likes of “I Dream of Genie.” What fans — along with Mr. Serling alike — learned in ’63 was that, on the whole, the tried-and-true “Twilight Zone” structure (three to-the-point acts leading to a head-smacking ending) worked best at a half-hour clip.
Richard Kelly — the 34-year-old, .500-batting filmmaker responsible for 2001’s wondrous “Donnie Darko” and its inferior follow-up, 2007’s all-kinds-of-wrong “Southland Tales” — should have sat with “I Dream of Genie” before taking on “The Box.” Based on Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story “Button, Button,” “The Box” operates with a pure “Twilight Zone” level, that of a morality tale disguised masked in creepy mood. Mr. Matheson wrote 16 of Serling’s “Twilight Zone” scripts, and saw “Button, Button” adapted into a sloppy episode of the show’s early 1980s revival. At least Mr. Kelly’s film is better than that. Still, at 110 scatterbrained minutes, Mr. Kelly’s film pushes Mr. Matheson’s perfectly fine short work to the point of narrative obesity. Two problematic 1963 “Twilight Zone” episodes for the price of one.