This movie was weird. Let's get that out of the way now. This movie was very,
very, very weird. I'm not talking about the story, though that was a little bit
strange, and I'm not talking about the characters, who were more or less of the
stock kind. I'm talking about the visuals.
The Cell is a visually stunning movie. Yes. It's a movie that will make you
think, "Wow, that's amazing!" or "Golly, that's beautiful, even if it is really
quite scary and ugly."
But first let's get into the story, which leads up to the insanely strange visuals.
This is a movie about a serial killer who has been killing young women, bleaching
their skin, and turning them into veritable human dolls. He kills them by slowly
drowning them (horrid way to die!). There are police looking for him. He starts
getting sloppy. They eventually find him.
Then he drops into a coma.
This wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that one of his victims is still
alive, held in captivity waiting for the entire drowning procedure (which is run
on some sort of computerized automatic timing) to take place. The police must
find this girl before time runs out.
But how?
Easy! We dive into his mind and ask him! It's as simple as that! Cue Jennifer
Lopez, who is the one who dives into his mind to find this information out. Stuff
happens, and eventually... well, let's just say that everything which is talked
about in regards to this special high-tech equipment bears relevance to the latter
half of the movie.
That's the movie, in a nutshell. They may as well have called it "The Mind of a
Psychopath" because that's where all the interesting (albeit strange and even plain
wrong) stuff happens. All the kick-ass visuals? Right there. All the strange but
beautiful costumes and sets? Right there. The most disturbing imagery of the movie?
Well, it's not all there, but most of it is.
Truth be told, there's not much more to say about this movie. For all its intricacies
in set design and costumes, the movie itself is pretty basic with a new little twist.
Killer has one last victim, so people must try to convince him to tell them where said
victim is. Except this time he's in a coma, and so they have to dive into his mind to
figure it out.
It's a decent movie, I suppose. There's nothing to really make it stand out from
other crime-thriller type movies like it other than the bizarre visuals. The per-
formances aren't much to shout at. Jennifer Lopez does a decent job, I suppose, as
the child-psychologist. Vince Vaughn is fairly good in his role as the detective who
is at first hunting for the killer and then for the last girl. The only person who
gives a stand-out performance is Vincent Donofrio as the serial killer. The man
is perfect in this role, which is by far one of the strangest and most disturbing
in ages. But he does it well.
The movie looks pretty, but overall it's not much more. Go and see it, if only for
the visuals. It's worth seeing for those. Outside of that, though, it's nothing
to write home about. Worth one viewing. That's pretty much it, unless you fall in
love with the sets and the costumes of this flick, whereas you'll likely see it a dozen
times over.