The Box, is a horror film based on the 1970 short story "Button, Button" by author Richard Matheson, which was previously adapted into an episode of the 1980s incarnation of the The Twilight Zone. The film is written and directed by Richard Kelly and stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a couple who receive a box with a mysterious power. Production began in November 2007 and concluded in February 2008. The film is set in Richmond, Virginia in 1976. One night, a financially strapped married couple, Arthur and Norma (Marsden and Diaz), receive a box that has a button. The next morning, a mysterious, disfigured stranger (Frank Langella) tells them that pushing the button will have consequences. They will receive $1,000,000, but someone in the world whom they don't know will die.

The film begins with a CIA internal memo being typed across the screen. It states that a man name Arlington Steward has recovered from his severe burn wounds and is delivering units related to the Mars project. Next, Norma awakes at 5:45AM as the doorbell rings as her husbands sleeps next to her. As she looks through the peephole, she sees a black car drive off, and upon opening the door, sees a package on her doorstep. Inside, she and her husband find a wooden box with a button protected by a glass dome, locked with a key, and a note, saying Mr. Steward will come at 5PM.

Arthur goes to work at NASA, where he works in optics, and helped in designing the camera on Viking Mars probe. He finds he has been rejected from the astronaut program despite acing his tests and glowing recommendations, because he failed his psych exam. Norma goes to her job as a teacher at an elite private school teaching literature, where they are discussing Satre's vision of Hell. One of her student remarks on her limp, after which she shows her class her disfigured right foot, missing 4 toes.