In case you haven’t seen it, the scenario is: A dude shows up and gives you a simple wooden box with a big red button on it. If you push the button, someone you don’t know will die and you will receive $1 million cash. If you don’t push the button within 24 hours, dude comes back for his box and will give it to someone else.
What the dude doesn’t tell you is, if you push the button:
your kid is striken with some kind of devastating debility (i.e. blind & deaf).
your spouse is given a gun with 1 bullet. Spouse is to shoot you in the heart. The moment you die, your kid is restored to health.
Step #2 is how you die when someone else pushes the button in* their* box.
This story bugs the crap out of me. I’ve not read the short story the movie is based on, but the message is that 1) nobody can resist pushing the button and 2) nobody will resist shooting the button-pusher. Really? The cynicism behind that is almost pitworthy. I truly resent the suggestion that I’d value an anonymous life so far beneath my “need” for any amount of money. And I truly resent the suggestion that I’d kill my spouse, no matter how responsible she may be for my kid’s condition or how much she consented, in order to restore him to health. The second is the more insulting because it implies I’d kill, or want to die, to avoid the ramifications of a selfish & horrible act. The story basicaly says humans are all self-interested weasles. Sorry, I dont’ buy it.
But on a humorous note, this story wouldn’t work in an Amish society because…you know, they don’t allow buttons in the first place. I suppose they could change the conditions up a bit: I’ll place a milk cow on your front lawn for 24 hours. If you milk it, someone you don’t know will watch TV and you will be given 3 healthy, loyal sons…
According to wikipedia the original short story had a different ending and Richard Matheson (the writer) did not like the changes made when the story was made into an episode of The Twilight Zone (the 80s version). The story and TZ episode were called, “Button, Button.” The TZ episode used to be available on youtube, if you are curious.
What really didn’t work for me was that I got the feeling when Diaz pushed the button she didn’t actually believe someone was going to die which takes a lot of the morality play out of it.
I was really looking forward to this movie and it was a big disappointment. Apart from a few genuinely creepy bits there wasn’t much there. I did like the sort of anti-climactic way they did the button pushing. There were several gasps from the audience when I saw it.
I don’t have kids but what I got from the inevitability of the spousal shooting was that the parental bond is so strong that people will always sacrifice themselves for their children. Can’t say myself how accurate that is but that’s how I read it. I don’t see it as “avoiding the ramifications of the act.” The kid was innocent so the parents don’t want him to suffer for their mistakes. Granted, now he will have to live with the loss of his parents instead of his senses. You could argue that is worse.
Also, what was up with that weird kid in school who turned up again later at the party? Wasn’t he too young to have been a button pusher?
He may have been a pusher’s kid? It’s implied the surviving spouse becomes an “employee,” maybe the kids do too. The babysitter talks about living in the hotel while she’s waiting for her parents to rebuild their house. I reckon she was a pusher’s kid as well.
Yeah, I thought the baby sitter seemed out of place as an employee as well. I thought the whole point was they were testing peoples morals and punishing ones who were selfish. It wouldn’t make sense for them to turn around and punish the children for the sins of their parents, though certainly the kid did get punished anyway. But I can’t see how they could even pretend to justify turning them into employees.
For some reason I thought it was also either stated or implied that they always chose couples who were a little older, presumably people who are old enough to know better than to be greedy and selfish and impulsive.
But this is kind of a typical Richard Kelly movie. Too much going on and not enough clues to make sense of it all.