Cell begins with artist Clay Riddell (John Cusack) arriving at the airport. He’s on the phone with his wife and kid when his battery runs out. This turns out to be a fortuitous occurrence, because just minutes later, a strange signal that’s sent through cell phones suddenly turns everyone using one into a mindless, violent zombie. Clay manages to escape from that chaos, and with the help of a few other survivors, he tries to make his way back home, hoping to find his family. Along the way, they continue to learn about the mysterious signal, and what it’s really doing to the people under its thrall.
The film is a very loose adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name. The looseness seems to have come out of necessity, as the film clearly didn’t have the resources to be more faithful to the book. Putting that aside, the film just isn’t very good. It is one of those horror movies where it rarely feels like the characters are actually in any danger. There are intriguing bits of strangeness here and there, but the film is unable to sustain any of it. And it’s just heading towards a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion that doesn’t really pay anything off.
This is essentially a zombie movie. It may be called Cell but it doesn’t really play much into what the movie is. The film basically treats it as the medium through which the zombie plague spreads. It doesn’t really attempt to play into the subtext of the original story, which was much more overtly concerned with people becoming consumed by their phones. This film isn’t really looking for any subtext at all. It is just a vague journey from one point to another, with scattered sightings of mindless creatures harassing the protagonists.
And as a zombie movie, the film isn’t very good. This is owed to the fact that the rules keep changing. Horror movies can be built on a strong backbone of clearly established parameters and mechanics. If it stays consistent, then the story can basically write itself as the characters try to find ways to deal with the central threat. In this film, the behavior of the zombies changes more than once. At a certain point, the film seems determined to make them less dangerous than when they first appeared, which is generally a bad thing to do in a horror movie.
And so the film just goes on aimlessly. There are points where we meet other survivors, but none of them make much of an impression. And then the film just peters out. It goes somewhere, but it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. It’s unclear what’s really supposed to be happening, or what the characters are meant to do. Stuff is happening but it’s difficult to care. It’s especially difficult since even the lead barely exhibits any interest in what he’s doing. John Cusack is sleeping through this role. Samuel L. Jackson brings some of his charisma to the role, but this isn’t exactly a good showcase for the actor either.
Cell just isn’t very exciting. There are unique aspects to this story, but they’re all just thrown away somewhere in the middle. And as a straightforward zombie picture, it lacks of a sense of direction and momentum. It isn’t always clear what the characters ought to be doing, the film playing at mysteries that offer no real resolution. The original novel isn’t really considered one of King’s finest works, but it still features clearer thinking than this movie provides. The film may not have had the resources to fully recreate the stuff that happens in the book, but it might have tried harder to emulate its thematic aims.
My Rating:
