The Cell

We've seen this type of story before, but not like this! Wow, bloody, wow, the film's visuals are unusual and incredible! Almost every scene is masterfully done. To add to the visual experience, the photography and cinematography are equally impressive. The editing is also fantastic. The costumes and make-up are also absolutely stunning.

This is the story of a sick madman - abused as a child - who abducts women and transforms them into dolls. There are a few very disturbing images, so be warned. The dream world is very realistically created to look and feel like a dream. This is one incredible movie! You can't help but marvel at this cinematic achievement!

The last time I reviewed a film helmed by a music video director, I was very angry at what I'd seen (`Mystery Men'), but Tarsem Singh spares us the fish-eye lenses and commercial overindulgences and decides to concentrate on presenting an astonishing visual and audible journey into the mind of a serial killer in `The Cell'.

Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) kills women by drowning them in glass cells, all the while videotaping the event. Afterwards, he disfigures the bodies to resemble dolls and then tosses the finished `products' off highways into ditches and streams. Nice guy. He also likes to suspend himself on chains attached to hooks inserted directly into his back. Lovely.

Meanwhile, FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) is hot on the killer's trail, and although Carl's started to get sloppy, he's just kidnapped another girl and she has 40 hours before her cell fills with water. Carl is soon apprehended, but only because he enters into a schizophrenic seizure and falls into a coma on his kitchen floor. A coma? But how are they going to find out where the last victim is? Oh, if only they could TRAVEL INSIDE HIS MIND. Hey, what a coincidence! Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) is a child psychologist involved in an experimental project that allows her to TRAVEL INSIDE THE MIND of coma victims.

And so begins a strange array of visuals and sounds, blended together so unusually that you honestly feel like you're experiencing a dream… a not so pleasant dream. Not only is Carl's mind slightly twisted, it's violent, disturbingly sexual, and very graphic. But, it's also like a train wreck; you can't help but look. Oddly enough, Mr. Singh clearly had the resources to make his special effects scream out at you with bright color and absurd lavishness, but he chose instead to simplify, placing the terror in the scale and content of the visuals. I can't even use an example. All I can say is think about a dream you've had that you couldn't describe to someone, and that's what watching this movie is like. The photography is so stunning that it virtually eliminates the need for dialogue (only about half the film has discourse), and coupled with the horrifically spooky and scathing soundtrack, the film literally takes on a life of its own.

My only objection is that when all is said and done, the only character we really understand is the serial killer. Several clues about the other characters' pasts led me to believe that their lives would come into play and that their own memories would be tested and confronted. To me, this would have taken this story to yet another psychological level, but perhaps it would have been too much for viewers.

Despite this shortcoming, `The Cell' stills provides a myriad of images that will make you want to watch a lot of cute cartoons before turning in for the night. Still, I don't know what was more disturbing: the movie, or the parents in the next row over who brought their two small kids to watch it.

Catharine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) is a psychologist who uses an experimental treatment that literally goes into the dreams of her patients. Captured serial killer Carl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) is in a coma and FBI Agent Novak (Vince Vaughn) convinces Deane to go into his mind to find his last victim before she's killed in an automatic water chamber.

Director Tarsem Singh uses the well worn serial killer movie to add an amazing visual depiction of the dreamworld. The serial killing is dark and creepy like 'Se7en'. It's been done before, but the dreamscape visuals are a completely different story. It is stunningly beautiful and disturbing, an artistic view on dreamscapes. The style is unlike anything I've seen before. For that, I must give it full marks.

The last film that provided a vivid and disturbing look at what insanity is probably like was In Dreams. In that movie, you didn't see insanity, you were THERE. Now The Cell comes along with an updated and much more disturbing portrayal of the inside of the mind of a psychotic killer. The opening scene takes you into the seemingly innocent mind of a comatose little boy, and the things that Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) sees are first fascinating and then terrifying. The things that she later sees in the mind of Vincent Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) are amazingly imaginative and fascinating, most of this stuff has never been seen in film before.

The story of The Cell is not exactly something that is really groundbreaking. In fact, it is basically the same as the story in The Silence of the Lambs. You have a killer in custody and these people have to enter his mind to find a female victim who is currently in danger of losing her life. The only real difference between the foundation of the plots is that in The Silence of the Lambs, you have to enter the mind of a killer to find a different killer as well as his current victim, while in The Cell, you have to enter the mind of a killer to find his own victim. However, despite the unfortunately weak story, The Cell completely revolutionizes the genre of the psychological thriller. None that have ever been made even come close to it.

Also, the film had good direction and was extremely well acted. Vince Vaughn delivers another of his characteristically excellent performances (he was even good as Norman Bates in the pathetic 1998 re-make of Psycho), and even Jennifer Lopez puts forth the second good effort of her career (the other being the great Out of Sight). Nothing can be said of the cinematography in The Cell to give it sufficient credit, it was imaginative and fascinatingly done and is unparalleled by anything ever seen in cinematic history. The Cell is an incredibly well-made film, and it deserves to be recognized.

I've read so many analytical essays amongst the reviews on here. You know what? Stop watching every film as if it's a challenge to something else. Just let the present experience envelope you. I saw this on TV and immediately went online to buy a copy. All the actors do a good job, the plot is not 100% new it's true - but hey, c'mon, go with the flow. Visually it is stunning, beautiful, terrifying, glorious. Too many people look at films to find the flaws - every film has flaws, but this one overcomes any you may pick on. Sit back, relax, then realise thet Vincent D'Onofrio give Hannibal Lecter a run for his money.