THE CELL
Review by John Beachem
* 1/2
Directed by: Tarsem Singh
Written by: Mark Protosevich
Serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) is murdering young women by
placing them in a sealed glass room for forty hours and then flooding the
room till they drown. FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) has finally
tracked the killer down, but Stargher has fallen into a coma from which he
will never awaken. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that he
kidnapped one last girl who is in that very room, and she's running out of
time. Novak has no idea where the room is, so he employs the services of Dr.
Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez), a child psychologist, who can use a
technology to enter peoples' minds. It seems Catherine is able to make her
patients trust her better than any psychologist who has tried the machine
before. Novak hopes Stargher will trust her and tell her the location. She
agrees to enter Stargher's mind, but she's never experienced anything like
Stargher's mind before. Soon she's lost in the disturbing world of
Stargher's sub-conscious, unable to tell she's no longer in the real world.
So Novak decides to go in and fetch her, but Stargher's mind is ready for
him.
Stephen King once said, regarding Stanley Kubrick's adaption of "The
Shining", "I think you want to hurt people with this movie." I disagree with
his assessment of Kubrick's horror masterpiece (In my humble opinion
anyway), but I think his words can be accurately applied to Tarsem Singh's
travesty, "The Cell". There's nothing remotely likeable about this film. The
only thing I could think of that I somewhat enjoyed were a few special
effects sequences. Other than that, I was experiencing only three different
emotions: bored, confused, and outraged. It's also the only movie this year
that I've almost walked out of. Is it worse than "Battlefield Earth"? Of
course not, but at least that piece of tripe was so bad I could laugh at it.
"The Cell" is one of the most pretentious, stuck up movies I've ever seen
(it even beat out "Magnolia"), completely convinced of how important its
message is. It's one thing for a movie to feature a controversial message,
it's quite another for the writers to cram that message down your throat.
Singh and Protosevich do just that in "The Cell", and I hope never to see
another film from either of them.
So how does the acting fare in this horrendous movie? Well, you've got
Vincent D'Onofrio ("13th Floor") playing a serial killer; something he seems
to enjoy very much, but he sleepwalks his way through the role. I heard him
in a recent interview discussing the types of roles he now takes, and he
stated "I take only the roles which interest me." If that's the case, and
this role interested him, I think Mr. D'Onofrio might be in need of serious
medical attention. Jennifer Lopez (who was wonderful in last year's "Out of
Sight") seems to be convinced, throughout the film, that speaking softly all
the time is the same thing as acting concerned. The only problem is I
couldn't hear half the "concerned" things she was saying. Vince Vaughn
("Swingers", the horrible "Psycho" remake) isn't given much of a chance to
act since his character is so underdeveloped. Protosevich's idea of
developing the character seems to be for him to say that he doesn't agree
with killers blaming their crimes on their childhood. When Lopez's character
argues with him about this however, he doesn't really fight back. Watch for
a cameo by James Gammon ("Major League") as a local police officer.
In that first paragraph I mentioned a message being crammed down our
throats, and that message is basically all there is to "The Cell". Singh
tries to hide it behind bizarre visuals and overly dramatic dialogue, but
all I noticed was the message being shoved in my face. What was this message
that I refer to with such bitterness? Simply, that inside every psychopathic
serial killer there's a scared little person trying to get out. What a
serial killer does is really just a cry for help so people will listen to
him, since his parents were abusive when he was a child. I figure there will
be three different groups of people seeing this movie: first will be the
group to which I belong - outraged that this message was being thrown at us;
second is the group that agrees with the message and thinks it's wonderful
that it's being shown in a movie; and last is the luckiest group, those who
either don't notice or don't care about the message and just sit there
dazzled by the pretty colors on screen. If you're in the first group, I urge
you to stay away from this movie. If you're in the second group, I adamantly
disagree with you. If you're in the third group, I envy you.
Obviously, one of the biggest draws of "The Cell" is the shocking visuals,
and I'll admit, they look nice in about a scene and a half. Other than that,
they generally resemble poor attempts to imitate Clive Barker. It's as
though the film makers were thinking "let's see what bizarre/disgusting
image we can hurl at them next", without using images that went along with
the story. Tarsem Singh's filming style involves giving all the dream
sequences a washed out look for no other reason than to distinguish between
dreams and real life (as though the floating people and pools of blood
weren't tipping us off). It also involves making everything from the
dialogue (except Jennifer Lopez's) to the music (an obnoxious score by
Howard Shore) to the sound effects gratingly loud and in-your-face. Tarsem
Singh is a first time director, and I can only hope he'll never be handed
another project. "The Cell" runs a long 105 minutes. I'd recommend it only
to psychology majors who want to either argue or agree with the film's
message and to aspiring directors so they can see how not to present strange
visuals. I give the movie one and a half out of five stars.
Comments? Send to: johnbeachem@dependentfilms.net
Past reviews can be found at:
http://www.epinions.com/user-elerad?public=yes or
http://us.imdb.com/ReviewsBy?John+Beachem
* * * * * - One of the best movies of the year.
* * * * - Great flick, try and catch this one.
* * * - Okay movie, hits and misses.
* * - Pretty bad, see it at your own risk.
* - See this one only if you enjoy pain.
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