Review: Despite promise, 'Cell' loses its signal

Posted Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 2:15 PM Central

by John Couture

It's no secret that I'm a huge Stephen King fan. I've read most of his novels and many of his short stories, but when it comes to film adaptations of his works, it's very much hit or miss.

For instance, I think The Shawshank Redemption is not only one of the best Stephen King adaptations, but perhaps in the top ten films ever made. On the other hand, for every Shawshank, there are five or six Riding the Bullets. Unfortunately, Cell falls squarely in the latter category.

I loved the novel upon which the film is based and when word came out that King himself would be writing the screenplay, I figured we were going to be treated to a classic thriller. At the very least, King's involvement would ensure that the project remained on the right track after Eli Roth bailed on the film early.

Given the unique signature that Roth would have stamped on the film, I'm almost curious now to see how he would have treated the material. I get it, when you try to adapt a verbose 350-page novel into a 90-minute film, you're going to lose a lot of details. Unfortunately, the lost details here make a big difference between a watchable take on the zombie trope and the unwatchable mess that is the final product of Cell.

What I don't get though is where it went wrong. You've got King adapting his own work and two strong lead actors in John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. Also, thanks to The Walking Dead, the whole zombie genre is pretty hot right now, so a fresh take on it should be able to find a sizable audience.

The first problem arises with the fact that the film ends up not being very fresh thanks to the various production delays. When the novel was published in 2006, the idea of a global terrorist attack using cell phones to deliver a code to produce zombies was terrifying, especially in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks.

Flash forward a decade and the main protagonist of Cell is undercut by the very real cell phone app Pokemon GO that basically does in real life when the pulse does in the film/novel. Naturally, the app doesn't turn the users into murderous hordes, but the parallel of creating mindless zombies is still pretty apt.

Also, you don't have to go far to find familiar stories in other films. In fact, last year's Kingsman: The Secret Service features Samuel L. Jackson as a bad guy tech genius who uses a signal delivered via cell phones to turn normal people into mindless killers. Not only is the story very similar to the one in Cell, but Kingsman presents it in a much more fleshed out story with much better style.

And the leads to the biggest problem that I had with Cell. The film is so amateurish that I've seen better filming and sound from first-year film students. Heck, half of the videos on facebook show a better understanding of the fundamentals of filmmaking than is present in this movie. Director Tod Williams doesn't have the longest resumé, but his experience on Paranormal Activity 2 should have prepared him enough to make a better film this time around.

The problems started with the opening credits. There are better options available on iMovie, instead, they use a solid black backdrop on the titles that covers up the action in the background. Not only is this annoying, but it prevents you from seeing important action that is setting up the opening scene. From there, the sound is horrible in places to the point where you can't even understand the dialog. The most egregious example of this is when John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are in a subway tunnel and the echoing is so bad that it's laughable.

The subpar production value is also evident in several scenes in the climax where obviously fake flames are digitally overlaid onto the film. It not only looks fake, but it makes the scene comical which is the exact opposite effect that I hope the filmmakers are going for.

With several high-profile Stephen King adaptations in the pipeline, I can only hope that Cell is the exception to the rule. For the most part, his work is perfectly suited for translation on the big screen, but Cell is a perfect example that his words need to be treated with the respect of a truly gifted filmmaker.