Cell Review
By Colton Gomez | 03/23/24 | 11:32 P.M. Mountain Time
Horror, Sci-Fi | Rated R | 1 hr 38 min | Film Release Date: May 19, 2016
Cell is a movie that came out in 2016 but feels like it came out in 2004. This adaptation from the Stephen King novel of the same name was published in 2006 (I promise I just looked that up to make sure the novel and the film were named the same, I was very close with my guess). The ideas sure make a lot more sense around the time of 2006 with cell phones becoming ubiquitous in the rapidly evolving technological world. The fears of cell phones and their power in society for good or worse are far less intense than 18 years ago when the original novel was released. It’s not that the fears have been quelled all that much, it’s just that nobody really seems to care, and they are far too useful.
When everybody has the same toy and access to all the same entertainment and information, the fear is that you sacrifice free-thinking and individuality for a more convenient world. There are obvious parallels here drawn between mass religion and primitive cultures with the holy god-sent cell phone. The Muslim Mecca hajj gathering is mirrored in this film by a giant swarm of brain-dead signal-receiving humans who are all in a tranced zombie, horde-mindset walking counter-clockwise in a grand circle around a humungous cell tower in the middle. This is how the humans who have been “recruited,” called “phoners”, recharge at night.
While I appreciate the broad sentiment about all religion’s harm to society, I think this is a rather insensitive portrayal of religious people. In fact, I find some scenes horrifying in that context. Like the scene when John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson douse a football field’s worth of immobile and weak “phoners” in gasoline, burn them all, and shoot down the runners. It also proposes horrifying methods of revenge for 9/11. including blowing up a truck full of C4 at Mecca. Ultimately, the film is about its fear of Muslims, its distaste and fears of religion and new cell phone technology.
The book was released just five years after 9/11, so I do not think that sensitivity is in the minds of many Americans at this time, including King. The film must have been in production hell for far too long and when the stars aligned for this film to be made, it should not have been. This work needed serious updating if it wanted any chance of success. Any film centered around current technological fears is bound to be outdated, anyway, especially if handled as poorly as this film was.
It appears that the avenue of cell phone technology served to explore two major fears that King must have been experiencing during this time. The rising popularity of cell phones means they being were used for short range and long-range communication, remote detonators, made people look crazy as if talking to themselves when they equipped a Bluetooth earpiece, and sucked people away from the real world and in-person conversations. People paying attention to the shiny new thing that nobody really understands how it works, could be compared to ancient civilizations worshipping cats or, for a film comparison, the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The film itself plays like an un-funny version of Zombieland. The story is simple: Separated father/graphic novelist works too much, the world falls apart, he groups up and goes on a road trip to hopefully find them safe and sound. I can easily see the film writer using Zombieland as a template and cutting out all the laughs, so all we are left with is a too-serious film about post 9/11 anxieties with no characters to care about. (The film even opens with a plane crashing into the airport.) The story is bare-bones and leaves a lot to be desired in terms of emotional investment and originality. This movie is too long, even for being only 1h 38min, it simply has nothing to really satisfy or pay off the audience’s investment.
I would like to talk about the story and plot more but frankly, there just is not much to discuss. The world is far more interesting than the characters, and that is only because there is the faint hope that a zombie will rip someone’s face off to disrupt the uninspired backstory scenes and insultingly obvious reshoots of quick and dirty expository scenes. No character is developed enough so their death scenes are very manageable to continue eating popcorn during.
If you have nothing better to do and want to see trailers for other films coming out in superior sound and picture, or maybe just want an excuse to eat overpriced but tasty popcorn, then maybe go see this film.
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