Review: 'Cell' is disappointingly unexciting
Clay (John Cusack) in “Cell.” (Cathay-Feris Films)
Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own.
Secret ending? Yes.
Running time: 98 minutes (~1.75 hours)
“Cell” is a zombie horror film that explores what happens when mobile phones literally turn people into zombies. It’s an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name It stars John Cusack (Clay Riddell), Samuel L. Jackson (Tom McCourt), Isabelle Fuhrman (Alice Maxwell), and Stacy Keach (Charles Ardai). It is rated NC-16.
The premise of “Cell” sounds like something parents tell their children if they’ve been on their phones for too long. Also, wouldn’t this premise have worked better with something more visual like, say television? Although it is a fairly decent extrapolation of what could possibly happen, it also smells faintly like scaremongering. Yes, too much mobile phone usage is bad — but then how feasible is it to have us stop using these devices?
Tom (Samuel L. Jackson) in “Cell.” (Cathay-Feris Films)
Highlights
Gruesome
“Cell” wears its NC-16 badge with pride, spilling blood with every violent evisceration. No character is safe from being mauled by the phoners (what the zombies are called in this film). Any time there’s an attack, you can be sure of buckets of blood everywhere. The worst part is that sometimes the violence doesn’t originate from the phoners — it comes from the survivors as well.
Creepy ending
Regardless of whether you liked how the ending was executed, there’s no doubt that it’s spine-chilling to see what has become of everyone. It sheds light on the workings of the phoners, and also colours previous scenes with a tinge of horror as you realise what the mindset of the phoners might have been. The conclusion does its job well to unnerve you, and is probably one of the better, less trite movie endings in recent months.
Clay is sad in “Cell.” (Cathay-Feris Films)
Letdowns
Heavy-handed metaphor
The film’s message is that too much mobile phone usage can literally turn you into a zombie. It’s just a stone’s throw away from saying that mobiles phones can kill you, although technically, being turned into a zombie does mean that you’re dead. You could substitute “mobiles phones” with any other undesirable item or behaviour, and it’s still going to sound like moralistic preaching from an Enid Blyton novel. A little more subtlety would have gone a long way — like maybe an errant bit of wiring in the mobile phones, rather than the phones themselves?
Zombie origins are not well explained
Adding to this heavy-handedness is the fact that the film never makes it quite clear how the mobile phones are turning people into zombies. It’s not a virus, that’s for sure, but it gets hand-waved away with the vaguest of explanations. We’re not looking for hard science here, just a reasonable explanation for everyone’s behaviour. And we never find it.
Unexciting
The worst part about “Cell” is that it’s so flat. It’s not boring, because it scares you with the occasional surprise attack and keeps you cringing when the characters put their faces so close to yet another phoner. But it never rises past that, even with a cast that has John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s unexciting, and disappointingly so.
Tom is ready for action in “Cell.” (Cathay-Feris Films)
“Cell” could have been a great film, but it lacks the X factor to propel it past normalcy.
Should you watch this if it’s free? OK.
Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? If you like zombie movies.
Score: 2.5/5
“Cell” opens in cinemas 7 July, 2016 (Thursday).
