Review of Cell (2016) by Kristopher B — 02 Jul 2016

I have been a huge Stephen King fan from the time I have, well, started reading. So its been natural for me to check out almost every film adaptions of his novels. While I do understand that novel adaptions are usually very hit or miss (except for YA I presume) as its much harder to please those who haven't read the text before.

Nevertheless As a true King fan, I have even come to support some of his failed adaptions such as Dreamcatcher, Secret Window (the remake), The Mist etc, hence you can understand my excitement for this one.

The concept of this film based on King's lesser successful novels seemed interesting, especially in today's world where our reliance on our cell phones has reached sky's limit (putting it lightly).

Plus the re pairing of actors John Cusack & Samuel L Jackson after King's widely overlooked yet awesome 1408, seemed like a great idea. So how is this film? Pretty terrible! Yup, this is not a good movie.

If there was anything I could compare it to, it would be director M.Night Shyamalan's The Happening (except slightly less idiotic). Everything about the movie was just wrong and I honestly gave it a lot of room, a lot of space to make errors and not flow the same.

Because ultimately you want to be surprised by the movie. You ultimately want the director to make it his own just a little bit, put his spin on something and have it shine even more. And I did, I watched the film to the very end.

Checked behind the credits and everything. And now I wish I would have gone on for the rest of my life without knowing this movie existed. Instead of cleverly using the plot, the makers decided to just rip off the very popular TV series The Walking Dead for a 98 minute film.

While The Walking Dead is produced as a character-driven thrill ride whereas this film decided to be nothing but a low budget borefest. The story follows Clay Riddell (John Cusack), a comic book artist estranged from his family who arrives at the Boston airport and is traveling home when all of a sudden, some sort of signal scrambles the brains of everyone currently using a cellphone.

Most of them immediately turn into mindless, murderous zombies in a bit of staged mayhem that does not convince, unfortunately. Clay runs for his life. He meets up with random fellow survivors - the train conductor Tom McCourt (Samuel L.

Jackson) and the teenage neighbor Alice (Isabelle Fuhrman). Together, they form the vague notion to travel north into New Hampshire. Clay wants to find his young son. But the roads are thick with "phoners," who are beginning to manifest new abilities that suggest the development of a psychic hive mind.

At first I felt the opening shots of this film set the tone for its overall success. They hold and pan shakily over the airport bustle as blocky opening credits cover most of the frame. It is hard to see anything in this visual climate, but what we do see is an airport in which literally every person has their phone in their hands.

I mean, does nobody read books at the airport anymore? Do people actually talk on their phones at the urinal? Once the dust settles, Clay is in denial. Having just gotten off the phone with his estranged wife, and later texting her to a response of absolute gibberish, his wife is likely zombified ).

Clay, ignoring these signs, decides to go out in search for his wife and son instead of staying in his apartment where he is objectively safe. Even though I am sure the opening setting of an airport on paper seems like a great idea especially to gather a multitude of cellphone users who end up as victims of the so-called pulse.

The result is a collection of sometimes hallucinatory images. Such as the security guard who tears apart his four-legged friend. Or that frenzied teenage girl who runs head-on against a wall, with a toothless, bloody smile as a result.

And as icing on the cake there's a destructive plane crash (unfortunately with the use of some lousy-looking special effects). Sadly enough there is not much exciting to see after this beginning. The film looks just like a standard zombie flick afterwards, with some survivors hopping around who are being chased by a horde of frenzied "phoners".

The film is also filled with plot holes, where everything which seems important is left unexplained. Who's the man in the red hoodie? Why does he pop-up everywhere? There is some gibberish about what the zombies are and how they get created, but there isn't any payoff - and there doesn't seem to be any rules.

How come some people become cell phone zombies and some people don't? They're all hearing the same signal. I can understand if this movie was trying to symbolically represent our modern day society and over-reliance on technology, but it doesn't do that well at all.

There are no parallels drawn or even characters that care. They all just chug along with no purpose. Even though the film boasts of some delightfully macabre imagery - like a spray truck driving over a field of unconscious "phoners," spraying them with gasoline, so a character played by Stacy Keach can fire a flaming arrow to burn them all alive (this is an actual thing that happens in this movie).

Some of these moments are bright spots in a film that desperately needed them. But they're few and far between. That's a lot of plot for a silly zombie movie, and the film grows too bogged down by it, particularly as our protagonists start to report seeing the same antagonistic figure in their dreams (a common King trope).

This all goes nowhere, and it doesn't feel that fast. There are scenes in the film where the characters seem to be very close to each other, and have a strong bond with each other but the film moves at such an accelerated pace even someone just casually watching this would struggle to find the close relationships plausible as none of the people portrayed have had long enough to get to know each other.

This would have been a lot better if the characters were actually interesting, but there are no redeeming qualities about any of them. They're as exciting as a cardboard, with even duller personalities.

The narrative drags so hard in the second act that it is easy to ignore their performances. It is easy to ignore much of what is going on, as a matter of fact. By the time we start approaching the climax, all we can hope for is an ending.

We get there, eventually, but not before being subjected to a very tepid climax that attempts to achieve multiple things while succeeding at none. Couple everything with uninspired direction by Tod Williams (Paranormal Activity 2) all around and some unconvincing performances, and you have something of a trial to get through.

During the entire length of the movie, I couldn't help but keep asking "What happened to John Cusack??". Now Samuel L Jackson makes his share of schlocky B-movies, but he also makes some good ones in between.

Lately it seems that John Cusack has taken the Nicolas Cage route of becoming insignificant in cinema. Where Cusack used to make memorable and crowd-pleasing movies, his catalog of recent movies have been average at best - and unwatchable at worst.

Here, he seems to be chugging along and speaking all his lines in a low raspy voice, I guess to seem more dramatic - but his lines have no significance, so it's the opposite of dramatic, just plain boring.

Samuel L. Jackson seems to be sleep walking the whole time, while Isabella Fuhrman & Stacy Keach are just fine. On the whole, 'Cell' is both a frustrating & a corny film hereby making it the worst Stephen King adaption I have ever seen.