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Reviews:
A
Welcome Nightmare:
The
Cell Review
Christian
De Matteo
Super
I have always been very intrigued by
nightmares, to the point that I am one of those
people who revel in the feeling of waking up scared
(I say “one of those people” in the hopes that
I’m not the lone freak). So I’ve been dying to see The
Cell since it’s first previews when I saw how
nightmarish they managed to make the human
subconscious look.
I knew the film would be disturbing— they
never hid that fact— and while I don’t usually
go for gore, I was willing to sit through it if was
to be done nightmare style.
Well, first time director Tarsem Singh
didn’t disappoint.
Right down to slow motion running and a
logically illogical chain of events while
“inside,” watching this was like having a Dolby
surround nightmare.
And I
really dug it.
The only way to truly describe the film
without giving too much away is to describe it
Hollywood style: The
Cell is like Silence
of the Lambs meets Dreamscape
with some Nightmare
on Elm Street thrown in.
(See The
Player for further examples of the “Hollywood
Pitch.”) The
Cell is exciting, suspenseful, completely
disturbing and discomforting and does it all
absolutely no-holds-barred.
The viewer is spared almost no bloody, gory,
horrid details, whether depicting real life child
abuse, extreme serial killer ritual, or
mindscape/anything-goes torture and grotesque.
To use a greatly overused cliché, this is
not one for the weak hearted.
Watching the film, I— for the first time literally
in years— actually considered closing my eyes
during two scenes.
And let me stress this next part, since some
brain surgeons in the audience brought their infants
and six year olds to the showing I attended: This is not for children. This
is not for children.
This is not for children.
If anyone did not get that, please email me
and I will sent it to you personally.
The movie deals with the horrible
psychological damage childhood trauma can cause in a
person and the terrible actions it can lead the
trauma victim to take.
It depicts both the cause and effect with
terrifying realism, and as we watched this so did
the small children in the theater, probably getting
some shade of just that trauma the film was dealing
with. Congratulations,
folks, you’re kids are gonna have nightmares for a
while.
The stars of the film are, obviously, the
CGI, the set design and the costume and the makeup.
This is the main attraction and, believe
the hype, it is impressive.
The film is one of the most freakish and
frightening looking films I’ve seen in some time
and it’s well worth the obscene price of the movie
ticket. If
you are worried that you’ve seen all the coolest
stuff in the preview, trust me, you haven’t.
They couldn’t show the coolest stuff in the
preview.
However, the cast should not at all be
overlooked, especially because one of the actors
usually is. Remember
“The bug” from MIB?
(That’s Men
in Black for those of you in a coma three
summers ago.) He
was the guy who looked like he didn’t fit in his
skin. That
was the excellent Vincent D’Onofrio, a very
under-appreciated actor who should be getting a lot
more roles than he is.
He plays the serial killer (in several
incarnations) and is fantastic.
He’s frightening, horrid, pitiful and sad
all at the same time providing the audience with a
bad guy that they can feel really bad for, even as
he’s removing a woman’s innards.
Vince Vaughn (Swingers,
Clay Pigeons) does a good job as the
“obsessed/on-a-crusade/dedicated/but sad FBI
agent” that every good serial killer flick needs
and Jennifer Lopez follow up her stellar musical
debut (that
was sarcasm, all apologies if you like her music)
with a fine performance as the
“dedicated/on-a-crusade/martyr-like” child
psychologist.
As you
can see, the film is far from being free of cliché,
but is forgiven because it does a very original and
intense job of dealing with the cliché.
The thing that saves the movie from being
just a Solid movie, it the purely visual aspect of
the film. That
alone knocks it into a higher category and makes it
more than what Kiss
the Girls was to Silence
of the Lambs.
The next few serial killer movies will most
probably fill the role of trend followers to The Cell’s trend-setting.
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