Review of The Cell (2000) by Amanda C — 04 Mar 2012

Tarsem Singh is defiantly a visual director. The Cell, like all of his films, looks spectacular. It is truly a feast for the eyes and one hell of a spectacle. Unfortunately outside of the visuals, Singh seems a little lost. This is a film that has a fairly straight forward narrative. A kidnapped woman must be found within a time limit or she will die and her kidnapper is in a coma. The premise that Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) can enter the mans mind to find the woman is nice high concept thriller material. Singh takes this idea through and removes all the forward momentum. Probably only a third of the film is relevant to the plot and the rest is just bonified spectacle. There is nothing wrong with spectacle for spectacles sake, however, given the premise, all the breaks in the forward momentum are jarring, even more so as Singh seems to have nothing to say with the spectacle. He's literally placing his characters into the mind of a sadistic psychopath, there is so much that could be explored psychologically that would be absolutely fascinating that Singh just glosses over. That wouldn't be an easy film to make or watch, but it would be something with some substance which The Cell has very little of.

That said, Singh does have the surrealist dream logic down and the visuals, costumes, sets, cinematography are all spectacular. It's defiantly not a nice film and contains a lot of disturbing imagery and if I'm going to be uncomfortable watching a film I want there to be a purpose behind it. I want to learn something about people and how their minds work and unfortunately The Cell falls short of the mark, merely exploiting the imagery for spectacle.