10 Horror Movies That Forced You To Answer Impossible Questions
9. Would You Let Someone You Don't Know Die For A Million Dollars? - The Box
Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly's 2009 film The Box was hinged on a brilliantly simple premise - if someone showed up on your doorstep and offered you $1 million for pressing a button, but pressing the button would kill one person you didn't know, would you do it?
Even with modern society being well aware of the monkey's paw - that is, wishes coming true at major unforeseen cost - the fact that pressing the button would kill someone entirely unknown would allow many to sleep well at night under the maxim, "out of sight, out of mind."
$1 million may no longer be the enormous fortune it once was, but it's still massively life-changing money for most people, and so the temptation would be tough to resist.
While the film ultimately takes this fascinating dilemma and runs away in an altogether less interesting direction, it's still a fantastic provocation.
Even knowing that the death could somehow negatively impact your own life through causation, many will fail to accept the value of a random human life as exceeding $1 million and gladly push the button.