Twenty years have gone by since Y2K. When the clocks rolled over, some very concerned people expected the world to end. Something about carrying the one, or not doing that, and causing our recently computerized world to shut down. Didn’t happen. You know what did happen? We continued abusing our newly acquired abilities to “make the movie we imagine” with CGI. The only limitations were creators’ imaginations. The mind became the apex predator in the land of special effects, and droves of stampeding entertainment consumers were easy pickings. Throughout the nineties, as processing speed improved, computer-generated imagery brought us to worlds that could otherwise only have been imagined. In the minds of filmmakers, we could enjoy brilliant story-telling complimented by images that would immerse us. Then it became a crutch. Writing became second fiddle. The box office was not impressed. By 2000, when The Cell hit theaters with its bloated, yet gorgeous CGI, audiences had had enough. The Cell made only $104 million in ticket sales.
It had everything going for it. Hot ticket, Jennifer Lopez, wanting to prove she had acting chops, headlined in Queen Amidala cosplay opposite flavor of the decade. Vince Vaughn, eager to redeem himself for his role as Norman Bates in the highly criticized remake of Psycho (1998). A talented director named Tarsem Singh made his feature film debut with high expectations. Casting pressed all the right buttons, and made all the right calls with character actors like Dylan Baker, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Patrick Bauchau, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Jake Weber to name a few. Outside of CGI, the set budgets were minimal, leaving room for immense profit.
There were a few vinyl costumes designed for suspended animation that looked like Iron Maiden’s Eddie from Somewhere in Time sans the rocking helmet (costuming opted for a shroud with some soft circuitry), a couple of torture chamber sets, and a helicopter. Impact shots took place in a rural landscape, not far from an interstate highway or in the chamber Lopez would use to avatar into the mind of a kid in a coma. Everything else was allocated to a CGI landscape that flashed through situations and visual gimmicks in excruciating slow motion. The horse dissection was pretty cool, but… what for?
At the time of release, audiences were asking the same question: “But what for?” We’d already seen images like these on MTV, thirty-second commercials, and film majors’ senior projects that used confusion and pointless mystery as a sleight of hand trick to make you think you just don’t understand the genius of what you’re seeing. The Cell was Silence of the Lambs (1991) using elements of Coma (1978), and dressed up in silky Broadway character design. Find the killer, find the victim, yada yada. No wonder they went all out in the CGI department.
But here’s the thing…
“Jenny from the Block” has served her twenty-year sentence for The Cell. We may have been a little harsh on this movie. It could never survive the box office today, and clearly it was slaughtered at the time of release, but it wasn’t as bad as you may remember. There are some movies you hold in high regard that you watch again after twenty years, and you wonder what the hell you were thinking. The Cell is that from the opposite perspective. It’s not that it wasn’t terribly executed, but if you enjoy looking at films and talking about films there is a lot to ingest, and a lot more to critique. The glitz and glam hides the fact that it was following trends in movies like Spawn (1997), and What Dreams May Come (1998) in look, and Lost Highway (1997), and Kiss The Girls (1997) in feel; it also set a tone for themes looking forward. Red Dragon (2002) was obviously riding on the success and popularity of Hannibal Lecter, but the feel of that movie was in the same category as The Cell. Signs (2002) was obviously riding on the success and popularity of a still fairly new M. Night Shyamalan, but the feel of it was established in the editing style and storyboarding of The Cell. After dabbling in comedy with The Wedding Planner (2001), where Jennifer Lopez belongs (not because she can’t act, but because she actually has comedic timing), she starred in Enough (2002), which borrowed the tension designed by a frustrating score and editing between high contrast shots and dark shots. Queen of the Damned (2002) borrowed some of the dramatic costumes juxtaposed with gritty real-life imagery. But most of all, The Cell opened the door for torture.
Vincent D’Onofrio is not Anthony Hopkins or Ted Levine, but those are high goals to reach. He was convincing enough in his Jekyll and Hyde roll as Carl Rudolph Stargher that he deserves another look. If only his character had existed a little longer before going into a coma, we would have gotten a chance to realize that he was capable of being compared to John Kramer, aka Jigsaw in the Saw series. The first Saw was released in 2004, and by that time American audiences had been hardened, having already collectively experienced tragedy and trauma in September of 2001. A few years later, we were prepared for the commercialized torturous characters we didn’t accept in 2000.
The Cell doesn’t stand up because it never had legs in the first place. We sawed them off without ever giving it a chance. Put it on your rainy Saturday list, and you may see it’s the kid from high school you wrote off as a loser. He never became powerful or super successful, but he got his shit together, and he’s driving a better car than most psychological thrillers these days. The car is painted in that gaudy iridescent gold people get when they want you to know they’re a jerk, but the car underneath is worth driving…in the rain…on a Saturday.
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