Running time: 115 mins. Starring: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella, Sam Oz Stone, James Rebhorn, Holmes Osborne, Gillian Jacobs. Director: Richard Kelly.

In our high-tech age, it’s sometimes easy to forget the consequences of our choices when everything is available at the click of a mouse or the touch of a keyboard.

The Box is a cautionary tale, adapted from the short story Button, Button by Richard Matheson, about a family living in 1970s suburban America who are faced with a terrible moral dilemma.

The repercussions of an apparently simple decision only become clear once the choice is made, by which time it is too late to backtrack on a life-altering proposition.

Writer-director Richard Kelly, who gained cult status with Donnie Darko, demands another gargantuan suspension of (dis)belief here as the narrative careens from the sublimely twisted to the ridiculous.

Norma Lewis (Diaz) and her husband Arthur (Marsden) are woken early one morning by the chimes of their doorbell.

Opening the front door, Norma discovers a brown paper-wrapped parcel: inside is a wooden box housing a bright red button and a note bearing the instructions: “Mr Steward will call upon you at 5pm.”

Sure enough, at the agreed time, when only Norma is home, the horribly disfigured Arlington Steward (Langella) makes his entrance and sets out a tantalising proposition.

If the Lewises push the red button in the next 24 hours, someone they don’t know will die and they will collect one million dollars. If they don’t push the red button, the box will be taken away and they get nothing.

While school teacher Norma and NASA engineer Arthur agonise over their decision, fate deals them both cruel blows.

With the clock ticking and their cosy existence suddenly in jeopardy, they must think hard about Steward’s horrifying proposal - not only for themselves, but also for their 13-year-old son Walter (Oz Stone), who is understandably curious about the parcel.

“You sure do ask a lot of questions,” laughs Norma. “And you’re avoiding them,” retorts the boy astutely.

The Box is another perplexing cinematic mind-game from Kelly, capturing the same sense of bewilderment and foreboding as Donnie Darko, albeit on a much larger budget.

Diaz wrings every drop of emotion from her fiercely-protective mother, who is just as disfigured as Steward after a freak accident, while Marsden adopts a more reactive role, caught in a web of intrigue which seems to involve the family’s babysitter Dana (Jacobs).