Cell 213

This is not really a review, it should be taken more as a collection of impressions of the film.

To say that this horror is bad and ridiculous is an understatement, this stuff is really stupid, everything that happens is stupid starting with how the lawyer arrives in prison up to the limited and tremendous deductive skills of the detective who wants to shed light on the matter in the stupidest way possible passing through the ending which is trivial but still really stupid. The only nice thing about the movie is the prison dynamics which are interesting and follow the protagonist's growing madness well, but other than that it's really ridiculous.

Maninder Chana writes a story about a cocky and somewhat unethical ambitious young lawyer that finds himself thrown into a complete Hell when one of his clients unexpectedly kills himself while on a private meeting only days prior to his release from jail.

Stephen T. Kay sits in the Director chair trying to build some tension around the story in a by-the-numbers horror movie.

And when the only thing that comes to your mind when you see the Writer & Director of a movie is "who?" then you know things are not stacking on the right side. Sure, sometimes unknown Writers can create wonderful scripts and unknown Directors can make masterpieces...sadly neither of those is the case with this movie.

The script is a complete mess, and there's a reason for that: this was Chana's first attempt at a "full" story, since his whole career was built over short stories. And you can see that "limitation" permeating into this movie's script.

We have the main character Michael Grey (played by Eric Balfour) as a ruthless young lawyer trying to win cases at all costs whose ambition pushes him to do some really questionable things in order to "secure" a win in Court. And then when everything seems to go "according to plans" suddenly everything goes into "Chaos Mode".

And that's when everything goes awry: almost everything in the story is just completely ridiculous without any sort of verisimilitude whatsoever. Plot elements come and go without any sort of actual explanation. Characters are introduced without any idea of "what to do with them", sometimes even introducing totally pointless characters into an already confusing plot. It seems as if the Writer just doesn't know how to tell a detailed tale and just purposely keeps everything vague as a way of not bothering explaining anything.

In Kay's case, his best work has been the 2000 flick Get Carter, with Sly Stallone. So...yeah, he's no Martin Scorsese.

In the acting department Eric Balfour does a somewhat acceptable job as the lead character, followed by Michael Rooker, in one of his usual roles: a despicable and twisted prison-officer-with-a-moral- standard-of-his-own. Bruce Greenwood does an awful job as South River State Penitentiary's Warden, with a dull and uninspired performance. And Deborah Valente plays Audrey Davis, a Correctional Dept. officer best described as "forgettable".

Bottom line:

-Confusing, convoluted and sloppy script

-Average directing job

-Average-to-Mediocre acting

-Standard photography

-Bad FX

-Not scary

-Not "profound"

-No jump scares

-Awful as a Thriller

-Awful as a Horror movie

-Awful as a Supernatural story

-An all-around weak movie

If you're into masochism there's better things to do to achieve your goal. This movie is 109 minutes of pure boredom from start to finish. Stay far away from it.

Eric talks real quiet in this movie. Most of the time I couldn't hear what he was saying. The movie in general isn't that great. No real complaints, just not the most entertaining movie.

It started out good, and gave me some clues as in it could be even better. For a while there, it did do so, but then it reached half point.

Disaster! You lose interest, the movie becomes fuzzy, unclear, some pointless scenes, some plot holes and as another user said, what a disappointing finale...

Cell 213 is as underground as possible, even tho it has quite a distribution, some good actors in it, but the plot never gave them a chance. Will not recommend it, not even for a horror junkie.

Cheers!

(2011) Cell 213 PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR

Cocky, philandering, lawyer, Michael Grey (Eric Balfour) who often attempts to free convicted murderers and rapists would do whatever it takes to win a case, even if it means resorting to unethical practices such as using scare tactics to scare crucial witnesses. Upon Michael visiting one of his clients, who's name is Charlie, who verbally confessed to raping and then killing an underage girl. Once conversing with Charlie at a closed room, he would then unexpectedly grab Michael's hand while holding his pen and then jab it onto his neck. Because there was no witnesses, except for the very resentful prison guard, Ray Clement (Michael Rooker) who just happened to walk in after Charlie was killed, Michael Grey then gets prosecuted and put in jail and placed into the same cell where, Charlie the child molester went berserk which is "Cell 213"- hence the title. And it is during this time is when Michael Grey start to hallucinate the same demons as Charlie. Watching this movie is like re-living a very bad dream since Michael Grey is an unlikable lawyer who frees admitted rapists and murderers, and as a result of attempting to receive the same treatment, he gets rejected from the very firm who hired him in the first place just because it has a reputation that needs to be respected. And although, this is a straight to rental movie, I like the direction this movie was conveying, which I started hating Michael to cheering for him, since he was portrayed as an underdog as the movie was progressing. I'd just wish there could've been a better ending since as the saying goes, "Two wrongs don't make it right"