Cell

Starring: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Clark Sarullo, Ethan Andrew Casto, Owen Teague, Stacy Keach
Directed by: Tod Williams
Rating: R
Genre: Action, Drama, Horror
2016

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: After all cell phones emit a frequency that turns its listeners into murderous zombies, two men (John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson) fight to survive.

Review:

Tim: I was looking forward to Cell, even though the reviews were godawful and the movie looked cheap and rushed. Still, it's based on a Stephen King novel (that I own but haven't read), and it stars John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, who costarred in 1408, a truly great Stephen King adaptation. So, I went into this optimistically. Quicker than a cell phone signal that turns you into a zombie, though, I realized that Tod Williams had no idea what to do with this movie. The budget is too small, the scrip too poor (and King worked on the screenplay himself), and the movie as a whole is just bad. This is just a bad movie. It might not have been a total waste of 1 hour, 38 minutes, but it came awfully close.

The idea of cell phones turning us into mindless zombies is a good one- that's the chief complaint of these little addicting devices. This movie should have had more of that commentary. It was all lost amidst the shlock of a dull zombie movie. From the very beginning of the film, which was supposed to be in Boston Logan airport (I've spent more time than I care to think about at Boston Logan and what we saw on screen was obviously not it), everything just feels subpar. It was almost like no one particularly cared about making a great movie. Director Tod Williams had no idea what he was doing. His actors look silly, nothing makes all that much sense, and he seems in a big rush to move to the next thing. It was like Williams got so focused on each individual scene that he totally missed the big picture. Due to that, this never feels like a cohesive movie that begins and builds momentum. It's a just a collection of dull and inadequate scenes edited together unsatisfactorily. I've seen a lot of bad movies in my life and this is yet another example where it just doesn't work. Whether that is due to lack of talent (likely), lack of truly caring (probably), or just a series of mistakes (sure, this is probably part of it as well), this movie doesn't work in any shape or form. It's a bad movie from beginning to end.

Now, what saves this from a much worse fate are a few things. One is John Cusack. The guy is trying here. I think he recognized that the ship was sinking, but he showed up and gave as good a performance as he could given the material. I do wish Cusack would make better role choices, but this movie is absolutely better with him in it. Samuel L. Jackson wasn't quite as good, but it was fun seeing these two reunite for another Stephen King adaptation. That was pretty cool to watch. I also like the weird sound the zombie things made at night. It was sufficiently creepy and memorable. I guess I'll give a little bit of credit to the weird ending. It didn't make total sense to me (and was overall pretty bad), but the visual was interesting. Those are about all the strengths I could find.

The weaknesses are easier. The film doesn't make sense, doesn't do a good enough job of establishing the characters nor a reason to care about them. The special effects are often so poor that it detracts from the film and makes you wonder why the budget wasn't bigger (see: they knew this film would bomb). I don't know, I don't need to belabor the point because I still like Stephen King, I still like John Cusack. It didn't work this time, unfortunately. Don't bother seeing this movie.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5



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