The Cell

At long last, I got around to watching The Cell. This film has been on my radar solely for Vincent D'Onofrio, who in my opinion is one of the greatest actors active today. And man, does he deliver here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Social worker Catherine Deane (played by Jennifer Lopez, who I always thought a much better actress than singer) is involved in an experimental treatment involving a billionaire's son in a coma. To get to the boy and possible reverse his condition, Catherine is taped into the boy's mind as a means of contacting him. The idea is to get him out of this world in his mind that he is believed to be trapped in. Obviously, this sort of treatment is experimental and financed by the boy's father. But as no visible progress is being made, he is ready to pack it in.

It is at this point in time that serial killer Carl Stargher (the aforementioned, flawless Mr. D'Onofrio) fall into a coma of his own, due to some rare form of schizophrenia. His latest victim is believed to be still alive at this point and there is a 40 hour window to save. Stargher keeps his victims in a glass box, fully automated, that is periodically filled with water until - at last - the victim drowns and is subsequently turned into a sort of doll.

The FBI then contacts the treatment facility and gets Catherine to tap into Stargher's mind to help them locate the missing young woman currently inside the box before she drowns. Catherine agrees and after initially contacting Stargher as a child and understanding the abuse he himself has suffered under the strict hand of his father, more than actually finding the girl, she wants to help the little boy. When one session goes wrong in a way that Catherine and Stargher overlap, FBI agent Peter Novak (the insufferable Vince Vaughn, showing why he should only be doing comedy) volunteers to participate in the experiment to 'find' Catherine again and save her.

It is he, in the end, that finds the deciding clue that helps them locate the victim and as he runs off to save the day, Catherine locks herself in with Stargher and reverses the experiment so that rather than her entering his mind, she invites the boy into her mind. But adult Stargher finds his younger self and Catherine becomes a huntress and kills Stargher - not through the arrows and sword she sticks into him, but through drowning the boy, who has suffered the same wounds as his older self.

Stargher is dead, the victim is savend and Catherine gets another shot at saving the billionaire's son by getting him into her inner world.

As strange as this sounds, the film is exciting and visually stunning in ways that I personally have only ever seen in those Hong Kong sword fighting epics.

But hey, don't take my word for it....

from Roger Ebert's review: On one level The Cell is science fiction about virtual reality, complete with the ominous observation that if your mind thinks it's real, then it is real, and if could kill you. On another level, the movie is a wildly visionary fantasy in which the mind-spaces of Stargher and Deane are landscapes by Jung out of Dalí, with a touch of the Tarot deck, plus light-and-sound trips reminiscent of 2001. On the third level, the movie is a race against time, in which a victim struggles for her life while the FBI desperately pieces together clues; these scenes reminded me of The Silence of the Lambs. The intercutting is so well done that at the end there is tension from all three directions, and what's at stake is not simply the life of the next victim, but also the soul of Carl Stargher, who lets Catherine get glimpses of his unhappy childhood.

8/10