Movie Review - Cell

Cell (2016)

The Genre Company / 120dB Films / Benaroya Pictures : Signature Entertainment / Saban Films

3.5 / 10

"Cell" was not my favourite Stephen King book; It was one of my least favourite of his works and for some of the same reasons as this film.

The first thing that made me sigh with apprehension was a film company calling themselves "The Genre Company" - Nice of them to choose a story which doesn't sit well in a genre.  For me, this isn't a Horror film as a lot of the elements of horror are lacking, suspense and tension aren't even a part of this film.  That said, they're missing from the novel as well.  There is only rudimentary aspect of drama in the film as it's too short to build up any characters that you can relate to, and when one of the main characters are killed the viewer feels very little.  So I'm not inclined to call it a Drama.  This is a shame as Stephen King is the master of believable and relatable characters, even when they're placed in extraordinary situations; it's even more of a shame as Mr King also wrote the screenplay.  There's some action thrown in, but again, not too much.  The only genre that suits this film would be Science Fiction; but that would also be a loose fitting.

I liked the idea of a pulse being transmitted through the cell phones and turning the user into a raving maniacal killing machine, this is a fresh take on the Zombie, though King doesn't leave it there, he has them keep evolving into something completely different.

I can understand the people transmitting the pulse as their voiceboxes are manipulated to make the transforming sounds.  However, the scene with the changelings at the University is ludicrous, to say the least.

The main trouble with the story is the lack of reason.  You are never told why the cell phones started transforming people or what the changelings will finally transform into.  Handled correctly it could have given the movie a more ominous feel, but everything is shot in a nonchalant way that it's dull and boring.  If this was what the director Tod Williams had planned, then he was wrong.

I like John Cusack, though I didn't like his performance in the other King movie adaptation "1408" though that was better than this one.  However, I can probably put that down to the lacklustre direction of the movie.  There were only two actors who stood out in this film; Samuel L Jackson as Tom McCort, for once he doesn't give his usual tough guy performance, here he's a normal guy; the other is Stacy Keach who does a good job of portraying a stoic and phlegmatic headmaster of the University.

To make this film worth watching you would have to go back to the drawing board.  I think if you took the Peter Jackson approach to this story and turned it into a trilogy, it would allow you to build the characters and implement the "Road Trip" feel of the book into the film.

I am still waiting for a good Stephen King movie adaptation... will it be IT?  Could it be The Gunslinger?  Living in hope...