Celular

Over the many year's movies have existed there's been a large number of questions raised by movies with answers non-forthcoming. These are questions that have been at the forefront of many a coffee date discussion, movie club forum or family dinner. Questions like who exactly is/was the "thing" (The Thing), is it a dream or reality (Inception), what was in the briefcase (Pulp Fiction) and now with this long completed and finally just released Stephen King adaptation we can add why exactly was John Cusack's in danger graphic novelist Clay Riddell so keen to pop on his beanie in the midst of a do or die cell phone lead apocalypse?

It's a question we may sadly never have answered and probably the only thing that will stick with you once Tod William's (where has the director who made The Door in the Floor gone?) film reaches its credit sequence, as this adaptation of one of King's least regarded books is one of those films just waiting to join the likes of The Wicker Man remake as a film that's just so bizarre and random it's hard to know who did and why they decided this was a film the public wanted.

In all its random glory however, if I was being totally honest, after all the negative press and jokes being made at its expense, Cell is not nearly as bad as it could've been when watched with the right mindset.

A seriously daft idea that induces a large amount of unintended laughter, Cell has its fair share of "what the" moments and it's a little sad seeing the likes of John Cusack (although he seems to have sold his movie soul some time ago now) and Samuel L. Jackson act through some insanely bizarre situations; I truly can't even begin to explain a scene involving a field of sleeping cell phone zombies, the film actually has some decent scenes and ideas that make this a B grade experience you can sit back and laugh at or with and an experience best watched with a room full of friends all up to witness a film that should never have made it to the cold light of day.

Through the history of movies we've been treated to King adaptation gold, from experiences like The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Shining and The Mist, Cell is certainly not one of those and is certainly not a film of cinematic virtue but it's an experience that deserves to be seen as even if you hate every minute of this oddball ride its likely you've never seen anything like it before and if you solve the beanie mystery, please let me know.

2 troll lol lol's out of 5

I am not a purist when it comes to adaptations, and I didn't hate this, at the same time I didn't love it.

It almost would've worked better as a miniseries.

Cell is a quasi zombie story by Stephen King, circa 2005, it's basically the thing Kirkman ripped off while developing The Walking Dead. The novel is a lumbering, melancholy at and times humorous take on the zombie genre and the mass market emergence of mobile communication devices.

The filmmakers do their damnedest at placing it into a modern timeframe, but it's almost too well adapted. While I'm not against changes and remakes, they almost would've been better off just sticking to the material and going all in.

Either way, I don't hate, it's just that the noncommittal to either the source material or the new take left the movie in a sort of state of limbo.

Overall, I'm glad I saw the film, I just wish it was willing to pick a side and just run with it.

Okay, people are going to tell you that this movie is dumb and corny and frustrating. Don't listen to them. Admittedly, they're absolutely right, but don't listen to them anyway.

This movie is the closest we're going to get to a sequel to Maximum Overdrive from Stephen King, and it's actually pretty close. Instead of a bunch of disparate stragglers surviving in a world where humanity is overrun by machines being controlled by an alien force, we get a bunch of disparate stragglers surviving in a world where humanity is overrun by people being controlled by an alien force. So it also dips into Walking Dead knock-off territory, where everyone who uses their phone basically becomes a fast zombie; but on the plus side, this still has a lot of King vibes in it.

Do you ever think about horror movies after seeing them and realize, if you view the film from the evil supernatural side of things, its motives make no sense? Like, "if the demon spirit wanted to possess the little girl before anyone could figure out what was going on and stop it, why did it spend the first 45 minutes terrorizing the babysitter and attracting needless attention to itself?" Well, this movie is like that: if you think about whatever mysterious intelligence is behind what's happening, what it decides to make the people it controls do doesn't really add up. But this movie goes the extra step, where you don't even have to do the thought experiment and shift perspectives to see that this movie regularly makes no sense.

It's like King wrote down his dream and these people filmed it. And that's kinda cool if you're prepared to view this film like Kurosawa's Dreams or Fulci's The Beyond. If broken and contradictory logic is going to bother you, you're going to be kicking a hole in your monitor. And for all the fun King brings to his work, there's also his usual flaws. In this case: hokey characters. DJ Liquid? The "you're cute" lady? The King Of the Internet? But it's also kind of charming in a "King's our lovable grandpa who writes these crazy stories" kinda way, and this film gets past them easily enough with plenty of fast paced action and shocking violence.

Other pros: Sam Jackson and John Cusack give their roles more weight than the script deserves. You actually care if they survive and worry for them in a way most lesser films don't manage. Stacy Keach shows up for a bit of fun, too. The story's also ambitious, playing with big ideas and isn't afraid to get pretty dark and cynical, which is nice to see in a more mainstream horror film with a name cast.

Other cons: Most of the down to Earth effects are fine (zombies, gore), but it tries to depict some very big things that clearly just aren't in its budget. There's a scene right in the very beginning where an airplane explodes, which they really should've left off-camera, because it really looks super fake. And some shots in the film's climax look like a cartoon.

Look, this is a heavy-handed movie for technophobes. Everyone who uses their cellphone turns into a mindless zombie. Characters walk through a brand new movie theater with a giant sign advertising "now with digital Projection," and then immediately into a drive-in movie lot. Keach gives a big dramatic reading to the line, "you can't stop progress, but you're never too old to fight it" before firing a bow and arrow. There's nothing subtle for miles around, and I'm sure we all know someone, probably older, who'll applaud the scene where people throw their smart phones into a fire, thinking finally someone else understands that change and technology are evil.

But for the rest of us, it's a pretty amusing, entertaining time so long as you're willing to not question anything it throws at you. Fast paced, loads of thrills, our protagonists walk around with armfuls of weapons and ammo; and yet the film takes itself seriously enough that it never starts to feel like a bad joke. Silly sure, but earnest. All it needed was a rockin' AC/DC soundtrack.

"Quite a problem these cell phones have caused." Clay Riddell (Cusack) has just landed and is talking to his wife about getting together with his kid again. When his phone dies he begins to look for change when all of a sudden he hears screaming and everyone in the airport falls to the ground. What happens next is unthinkable and now, in a type of post apocalyptic world Clay and a small group of survivors try to make it back to his family, before it's too late. I had no idea what to expect from this movie. I liked the fact that it was a Stephen King book, though I never read it, and the idea of technology leading to some sort of downfall is scary in its possibility. All of the excitement started to slowly fade away when the movie fell into what it really was… another zombie movie. The symbolism of cell phones turning people into zombies wasn't lost on me and the movie did have a message in that sense, but it essentially became just another generic zombie movie. Overall, not terrible and this is worth seeing, but I just feel it could have been so much more than another in the line of zombie movies. I give this a B-.

Watching it right now on Rai2, dubbed in Italian.

At first I thought it was some kinda B movie despite the big names (maybe Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack have taken the path of Nicolas Cage?) and the level of production. Then, to my surprise, I discovered this was a Stephen King adaptation, and not the brainchild of some wannabe King.

Something's extremely off. Hard to put a finger on it at first look, but the director seems to have forgotten to set a particular mood and pace for the material in hand. This is so rushed it fails to be taken seriously. Even less credible an outcome than Zombie parodies.

And to top it: I believe it requires some kind of special talent to have Samuel L. Jackson as a lead in a movie and still not even manage to make the outcome even moderately entertaining.

I may not even make it till the end.