Here's the official synopsis:

Norma and Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child, receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences. A mysterious stranger, delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button. But, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world; someone they don't know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the cross-hairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity.

The Box is released on November 6th.

We saw a ton of gorgeous footage, which sort of spelled out the movie's storyline: a man missing half his face comes to visit Norma (Cameron Diaz) in 1976, and offers her a million dollars. All she has to do, to earn it, is press a button on a wooden box in the next 24 hours — and someone she's never met will die. Her husband Arthur (James Marsden) is a scientist, and he's skeptical about the box, which appears to be just a plain wooden box with a glass dome and a button inside. And eventually, she winds up pressing the button, and then regrets it. Norma and Arthur track down the family of the person who died as a result of their button-pressing, and try to give them the money, to no avail. The movie is based on a short story by Richard Matheson, but Darko takes the original concept and runs with it.

More importantly, the footage we saw was like Donnie Darko, only more grown up and suburban. There was lots of trippy imagery, including people moving weirdly in unison, and the images look color-enhanced and creepy. There are some of those liquidy surreal globs that you'll recognize from Darko, and clearly Diaz and Marsden fall into a weird, scary world as a result of their decision to press the button. The film is scored by Arcade Fire.

In the press conference after the panel, Kelly told us that the movie puts Arthur and Norma through a more extreme test in the film's second and third acts, which push them to the outer limits (so to speak) of their very being. And the movie's ending is incredibly intense and emotional, as they're tested to the brink.

So who's behind this weird moral test, of pressing a deadly button for money? The biggest clues came from Diaz. (And this is a huge spoiler, so beware.) In the press conference, she talked about a higher power that's overseeing humans and trying to decide whether we deserve to go on living, as a species. But she got even more specific in the actual panel, referring to Martians who are pulling the strings. There's an existential question: "Are we alone, or is there somebody else out there pushing the button as well?" says Diaz. Also, Kelly says the movie ties in with specific events at NASA in 1976, where Arthur works.

Kelly adds that the movie is his most personal, and the film's main characters are based on his parents. He set it in the 1970s, because you couldn't have a film about "somebody you don't know" dying set today, with all the social networks and search engines. "I didn't want to write the scene where [the main characters] google arlington steward and then tweet it," says Kelly.

The film is intended to be a Hitchcockian suspense drama of the sort Kelly's parents would like, with no swearing in it whatsoever.

Adds Kelly:

I'd love to do bigger films, to play with big toys like motion capture and 3D within the studio system. But this is still the most personal film I've ever made and it's within my sensibility. I'd like to make a movie that makes more than $1 million.

He added in the press conference afterwards that it's "a real relief to know that I'm making a film that's going to be on a big screen and in a lot of theaters." He was able to navigate the studio system in a way that allowed him to make exactly the movie he wanted to make.

So we were curious about the symbolism of this random button, with its power to kill and enrich — since the movie is set during the Cold War, and that's when the source material comes from, we asked Kelly if the button is sort of linked back to the fear of nuclear war. And he responded:

The button can be a symbol of many things. It's a very pronounced metaphor. What Matheson designed, with his short story, feels like it's from myth. It feels like an old myth... and that was waht was so fascinating about it for me. It's just a wooden contraption, with a glass dome and a red button on it, and it's not something fancy. It doesn't have elaborate technology. But there's something about its simplicity, that makes your head kind of explode with the possibilities of what it could mean, and I think you can draw parallels to all sorts of things, [like] the red button that our president has that will launch nuclear missiles, or pressing a button to vote for a politician or launch a bomb.

Adds Marsden: "Or end a friendship via email. Hit send." (He makes a sort of "boom" noise.) And Diaz compares it to the "easy button," which you can get at office supply stores. "How easy is it, really?" asks Diaz.

But when you come right down to it, Kelly says it's foolish to blame a piece of technology for our own violent acts — technology makes it easier to kill another person without looking him or her in the eye, unlike the more personal, visceral feeling of stabbing someone.

Additional reporting by Annalee Newitz.

In a decision possibly aimed at pulling in more "star power" for this film, Cameron Diaz is rumored to co-star in Green Hornet, says Entertainment Weekly . Don't get me wrong — she was all but delightful in There's Something About Mary, but that ship has sailed, reached its destination and been retired to the shipping yards, as far as I'm concerned.

Could this be a turning point for her career where she plays a slightly more interesting character different from the bevvy of romcoms she's been churning out? With the way Seth Rogen is pitching it — no, probably not. She'll wear something sexy and make slapsticky one-of-the-guys jokes, as per usual. And I'll clench my teeth uncomfortably and squirm about wondering what happened to that crazy girl from Vanilla Sky?

Still, I'm clinging to the brilliance of Michel Gondry's perspective, something that never ceases to amaze me. It's really unclear how this movie will play out, and it's too early in the production process to speculate about the project's failure or success. But at least there's Gondry.

After the critical and commercial misstep that was Southland Tales, writer-director Kelly is looking for a comeback - and when your cinematic strengths are in science fiction and horror, it's hard to think of a firmer foundation than adapting from Richard Matheson, whose 1970 short story "Button, Button" provides the basis for the The Box.

The film follows Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a couple in 1976 struggling with marital and financial issues. A mysterious stranger (Frank Langella) gives them a box and a simple proposition: push the button on the box and they get a million dollars… but someone they don't know will die. This is the second major adaptation of Matheson's story, following a 1986 episode of The New Twilight Zone.

According to a post on Kelly's Myspace, the film was shot last March and completed post-production at the end of 2008. The extensive, eight-month post-production period was due to the 300 visual effects shots the film required, which is triple what Kelly used in Southland Tales. Warner Brothers, the film's distributor, considered releasing the film this March, but all parties involved quickly agreed it made much more sense to put the film out during Halloween season, hence the release date of October 30, 2009.

Kelly writes that this is his most personal film yet, which, considering how weird and uncompromising his first two movies were, must really be saying something. Fans of sweeping baroque pop indie-rock (guilty as charged) will be interested to know that Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, and their frequent collaborator Owen Pallett provided over eighty minutes of score for the film. There will also be music from the Grateful Dead, Derek and the Dominos, Wilson Pickett, The Marshall Tucker Band, and Scott Walker. The film clocks in at an hour and fifty-five minutes, including the end credits.

So how about it? I've got to admit that Donnie Darko left me cold when I watched it a few years ago, and I've yet to summon up the raw courage necessary to work through Southland Tales. Still, there is a delightful strangeness to Kelly's films, and this does sound rather promising. Is this the sort of commercially viable film with a recognizable cast that can finally introduce the public at large to the insanity of a Richard Kelly movie?

[Richard Kelly's Myspace]

Jenna MacNipperson (Cameron Diaz) is a spoiled daddy's girl on vacation in Cancun. When her island-hopping party boat runs aground on the ancient city of R'lyeh, she accidentally awakens the slumbering Cthulhu (voiced by Terry Hatcher), The Thing which cannot be described. One look at MacNipperson's Manolo Blahniks and Cthulhu knows they will be BFF - literally, for all eternity. From Cyclopean masonry and non-Euclidean architecture to Rodeo Drive and Hollywood afterparties, the world is their oyster as these two outrageous debutantes embark on the Final Shopping Spree.

But one man wants to ruin the fun: detective Hutch Fleming (Martin Lawrence). This uptight officer of the law wants to nail the girls for credit card fraud, as well as a series of mutilation murders. Wacky misadventures ensue when Cthulhu and MacNipperson avoid Fleming's bumbling justice. When the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu and a host of cultists show up, you know the fun is just getting started. I smell franchise!