Cell (2016) Review

Cell (2016) Review

It’s been quite the journey, but I’ve finally arrived at the end of my Stephen King-athon. I started with Carrie, which celebrates its 40^th anniversary this year, and now it’s time to end with the most recent Stephen King novel to be adapted to film, Cell. I’ve actually been waiting for this movie for a couple years, and held off on doing this marathon of Stephen King reviews just so I could include it. Unfortunately, when I saw a trailer for it earlier this year and heard some critic reviews, it didn’t sound too good.

I’m going to cut right to the chase. Cell sucks. The directing, writing, acting, dialogue, pacing, visual effects, lighting, it’s all bad. Even things you wouldn’t expect could be bad are exceptionally amateur, like the editing, which is incoherent at points, or the camera work, which is often so shaky and unstable you can’t focus on what’s in the frame. I’ve seen college film projects—nay, high school film projects, more competent than this movie. 

The story, in a nutshell, is John Cusack plays a graphic novel illustrator who teams up with Samuel L. Jackson after a weird pandemic of craziness happens and they try to get back to Cusack’s family. Some kind of signal goes through everyone’s cellphones that turns them into zombies, but they’re not like The Walking Dead kind of zombies, it’s more like the rage virus from 28 Days Later, only dumber. People are literally running around screaming, mouths agape, waving their arms over their heads. It’s like when little kids have had too much sugar and are going ape shit. 

What’s really too bad is, if you saw John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson in 1408 (another Stephen King adaptation which I reviewed a few days ago), then you know what Cell could’ve been. They were quite good in 1408. These are two talented actors, who clearly did not even try to turn in good performances in Cell. Perhaps they knew they weren’t getting paid enough to be in something so bad. You could say…they phoned it in. Bam, that terrible pun right there is funnier than any of the intended humour in this movie. I say intended because this movie is deadly serious—everything is played with total sincerity, which just makes it even more absurd and hilarious. 

I’m going to talk about two scenes that had me laughing-out-loud and/or utterly baffled. The first scene where everyone starts going crazy is off-the-wall. People are running all around, tackling each other, someone tackles a dog and eats it, some guy attacks John Cusack, so Cusack kicks him in the head, then a cop comes and points his gun at Cusack so he puts his hands up, then the cop just shoots the guy Cusack had kicked in the head for no reason, and Cusack’s like, you gonna just shoot everyone? It makes no sense. 

Later on, there are a bunch of zombies (or “phoners”, as they’re called) lying in a field, and music is playing from their mouths. The song? Remember when that Russian trolololol song was an internet sensation a few years back? Yeah, that’s the one. I honestly couldn’t believe my ears. Then, I couldn’t believe my eyes, because next thing, John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson get drunk and drive over all of them in a truck! It’s something that has to be seen to be believed. 

For a while there, it seemed like this was one of those movies that’s so bad, it’s good. But in the later scenes, it becomes so monotonous and dull, with little action and lots of bad dialogue, I can’t truly say it’s so-bad-its-good as a whole. What makes a movie like The Room or Zaat or Troll 2 so-bad-its-good is the whole thing is bad—like, really bad—from beginning to end. Cell has several scenes that definitely fit the description, but some of it is done comprehensively enough that I didn’t find it bad in an enjoyable way, it was just a blah type of bad. I think it’ll eventually be included in the conversation of movies that are so bad they’re good anyway, but for me, it wasn’t quite in that realm as a whole.    

On a technical level, Cell may very well be the worst Stephen King movie of all-time, but I can’t say it’s the worst I’ve ever seen, simply because I wasn’t completely bored the whole time. When those so-bad-they’re-good scenes were happening, I was laughing and genuinely entertained, which is more than I can say for something like Thinner or Dolan’s Cadillac. Obviously I do not recommend Cell because I couldn’t live with myself knowing I recommended something that will rob someone of 90 minutes of their life, but if you enjoy bad movies, then I think I’ve given enough indication here as to whether or not it would be worth your time. 

I figured ending the Stephen King-athon with Cell would mean going out with a whimper, so that’s why I prepared for such a situation. Tune in tomorrow for one final review, where I’ll be discussing an Award-winning movie that many of you may have thought I skipped. Don’t worry, I saved the best for last.