The Cell (2000)

Schizoid serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) has been captured at last, but a neurological seizure has rendered him comatose, and FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughan) has no way to determine the location of Stargher's latest and still-living victim. To probe the secrets contained in Stargher's traumatized psyche, the FBI recruits psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez), who has mastered a new technology that allows her to enter the mind of another person. What she finds in Stargher's head is a theater of the grotesque, which, as envisioned by first-time director Tarsem Singh, is a smorgasbord of the surreal that borrows liberally from the Brothers Quay, Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, Hieronymous Bosch, Salvador Dali, and a surplus of other cannibalized sources.

This provides one of the wildest, weirdest visual feasts ever committed to film, and The Cell earns a place among such movie mind-trips as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Altered States, What Dreams May Come, and Un Chien Andalou. Is this a good thing? Sure, if all you want is freakazoid eye-candy. If you're looking for emotional depth, substantial plot, and artistic coherence, The Cell is sure to disappoint. The pop-psychology pablum of Mark Protosevich's screenplay would be laughable if it weren't given such somber significance, and Singh's exploitative use of sadomasochistic imagery is repugnant (this movie makes Seven look tame), so you're better off marveling at the nightmare visions that are realized with astonishing potency. The Cell is too shallow to stay in your head for long, but while it's there, it's one hell of a show. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

awesome!

super fast shipping awesome condition! great job five stars all the way i would definitely buy from you again! October 7, 2008

Just a bad mix

This movie is something like "The Matrix" meets "The Silence of the Lambs" meets "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." Say, huh?

The story's based on a psychopath drama, but that's the part they should have hacked out of the whole movie. They should have found another reason to go into people's brains. The rich, pleasantly beautiful, often self-serving imagery runs completely ajar with the gruesomely real, criminally insane motif. What's pretty doing in this guy's head, anyway? They really didn't need to have such a blood and guts, hard-core, cop hunt for the psychopath story as the vehicle for this type of creativity. And by the time this movie was made, the psychopath stuff was an already worn out cliche formula. D'Onofrio's persona too closely mimics Ted Levine's "Silence of the Lambs" serial killer, and Lopez's character is so pasteboard safe and sweet, she borders on the completely ridiculous.

This should have been a fantasy operating on more spiritual and metaphysical levels. What a waste of a monumental investment in great imaginations. Singh is clever, but he's not deep, and he's not adult. He focuses too much on the micro, and not enough on the macro, and very little on the human element. In his narration in the special features, he sounds more like a boy playing giddy games with other people's money and other people's ideas than an artist with a true original vision and something to say, and that's this movie's problem--it doesn't really have much to say that's anything new, although it has many, many pretty and visually dazzling moments. It's just a bunch of those pretty moments strung together with a maniac who runs through them followed around by Mother Theresa. As to the brains who wrote this wooden script, off with their heads. September 29, 2008

Decent concept, terrible execution....

I remember many critics (including Roger Ebert) were raving about this film, comparing Tarsem (the director) to Jodorowsky, Tarkovsky, Fellini, and the like. Many people throw comparisons like that around recklessly these days, but nevertheless I decided to check this film out, and it bored me to no end. While it has an intriguing idea (an FBI agent literally going into the mind of a serial killer), its execution is wretched. The dialogue is mind numbingly bad, the performances (especially Lopez) are comatose, and some of the dream sequences, while visually arresting at times, are just eye candy and really don't have any reasonance beyond that. On the DVD, you can skip to them, and probably enjoy them more as short films than the actual feature length film. Tarsem Singh, the director, cut his teeth on flashy visuals with music videos, and that aesthetic is what's on display here. It makes for a shallow, superficial film. This is a particularly bad film, one that lives nowhere close to the hype. September 8, 2008

One of my favorite movies, despite the bad reviews...[SPOILERS]

I know just about everyone has bad things to say about this movie. And I think I know why. Bad casting. Jennifer Lopez was cast probably because she - like the movie - is very nice to look at. If they had cast someone else like Julianne Moore or even Nicole Kidman (also nice to look at, but less overtly) and switched Vince Vaughn for someone better. (I even imagined the two of them as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, pre Mr. & Mrs. Smith - not bad, right?) Vincent D'onofrio is AWESOME in this movie. He is just as awesome as Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Without a Trace)'s accent is terrible. But, if you can overlook the casting errors (and there are many) and just revel in the interesting storyline and eerie beauty of Tarsem Singh's visuals, you'll like it.

It's got a good plot. SPOILERS. Jennifer Lopez is like the only therapist in the free world who has the emotional stability (she genuinely cares) to do this science thing where she enters into her patients' minds. It's very Sixth Sense, in that Katharine (J-Lo) must help Vincent D'onofrio's character and locate this missing girl, so she can vicariously help Edward, her young patient who's in some type of coma, whose parents are aprehensive of J-Lo's methods.

The visuals are stunning and very cool. It was 99 or so when this movie was filmed so it's less CGI fake looking Golden Compass polar bears and more like, real-life-used-as-art. It's awesome. Not scary, just very visually beautiful and an interesting concept. Some people say that story is sacrificed for the visuals. Maybe. I personally don't think so. The plot is solid from the beginning to the end and the ending isn't stupid. It's not as good or surprising as the ending to the Sixth Sense, but it's a good visually stunning movie. September 7, 2008

A disturbing movie where the visual imagery stays with you for some time

This is a disturbing movie; I had to watch it in segments, as the bizarre nature of the violence was unnerving. Vincent D'Onofrio plays a serial killer with a bizarre way of handling his victims. He snatches females and places them in a glass cell with food, water and a toilet. A video camera records their actions and then after a time, water is released into the cell and they are drowned. All of this is automatic; the killer does not have to be present at the actual murder. After they are dead, he removes the body, bleaches it white and turns it into a "doll."
Vince Vaughn plays an FBI agent on the trail of this killer. Using the clue of an albino dog, he is able to track him down and execute a raid on his house. Unfortunately, the D'Onofrio character suffers a schizophrenic seizure and goes into an unrecoverable coma. Since he had just snared another victim and the cell is at another location, the FBI team is desperate to find her before she is murdered.
Jennifer Lopez plays a worker in an unusual psychiatric clinic. Using body suits, chemicals and data transfers between minds, they are able to connect her into the mind of a patient. The goal is to coax the mentally ill person into a cure. However, the process is very hard on Lopez, there is the real danger that she could take on the madness of a patient.
In their desperation to find the last woman kidnapped, the FBI team requests that the Lopez character perform the process on the D'Onofrio character. This leads her down a path of bizarre and fantastic scenarios done with superb special effects. Some of the scenes are gross, others are beautiful and you can understand how living them, even in a fantasy, has the potential to drive you to madness.
This movie is intense; it is a horror film in combination with a murder thriller. At times it is riveting yet there are other times you want to turn your head in disgust. Whatever else it may be, it stays in your mind for some time after you watch it.
September 4, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...