'The Cell': Prowling the Corridors of a Very Twisted Psyche (2025)

August 18, 2000

FILM REVIEW

By ELVIS MITCHELL

	Lorey Sebastian/ New Line Cinema
	Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Lopez track a serial killer in "The Cell."
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ou're already exhausted," someone says to Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez), a child psychologist, early in the new suspense thriller "The Cell." Catherine is slaving to break through to a little boy who is comatose from advanced schizophrenia, using an experimental technique that allows her to enter his subconscious. In this picture, it's called the "neurological synaptic transfer system" by Catherine's colleague Henry West (Dylan Baker). But Alec Guinness would have called it "mumbo jumbo."

"The Cell" was made by Tarsem Singh, a director whose talents haven't quite jelled into storytelling yet. He folds this tale over and over on itself, working with a script by Mark Protosevich that blends elements of "The Silence of the Lambs," "Manhunter," "The Matrix," "Seven," "Dreamscape" and "Spellbound" with the stop-motion animation of the brothers Quay ("Street of Crocodiles"), the moody photography of Matt Mahurin, the paintings of Francis Bacon and possibly of the abstract graphics artist Bill Sienkiewicz, and so many other things that there's no there there.

Catherine has an extraordinary empathy with her patients, and Ms. Lopez uses her little-girl voice -- it has an inviting tremolo -- in a new way here. Instead of speaking in her usual tough inflections, she offers a soft, intimate whisper; you can hear the hurt in each syllable, but there is also an undercurrent of determination.

The picture wouldn't work without her, but it doesn't quite work with her. She gives a provocative and nuanced performance, a contrast to the film's florid visual schemes, in which she goes from looking like a princess bride in a white-feather wedding dress (she's so chic that even in someone's subconscious she's wearing this season's colors) to embodying the coy, strumpet-next-door calculation of Madonna during her midlife electronica stage. And her presence offers a tickling spin on the central idea of "The Cell"; what boy doesn't want Jennifer Lopez in his dreams?

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The film introduces a ticking bomb to its angst-ridden story when Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio), a serial killer, has a seizure and goes into a coma similar to the boy's. Stargher abducts women and imprisons them in a Plexiglas cell that slowly fills with water; he then fixes up their drowned corpses to look like dolls.

Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn), an F.B.I. agent who has gone without sleep tracking Stargher and looks as haggard as anyone can in a Jil Sander suit, talks Catherine into entering the killer's mind; Stargher's latest kidnapping victim (Tara Subkoff) is trapped in his cell, and she has to be found before the automated torture takes her life.

Catherine slips into her dream-penetrating ensemble, a red vinyl suit that looks as if it's made from strawberry Twizzlers (Stargher wears the same thing) and invades his subconscious.

When things take a bad turn, Novak persuades Catherine's team to let him join her.

There is powerful and unforgettable imagery in "The Cell," but it's nihilism under glass, reminiscent of the honeyed yet grim tableaus of a Nine Inch Nails music video.

Mr. Singh also perfected this look, in videos like R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion."

The director is a dextrous visual stylist, moving effortlessly from smooth, gleaming surfaces photographed in slow motion to grainy, slightly sped-up frames in the very same shot. You could say that "The Cell" has been production-designed within an inch of its life: Tom Foden sets a new standard in his field. Few pictures have been visually coordinated on such a scale, and many of the details will be lost on DVD.

Nevertheless, just when "The Cell," which is so cool to the touch that it could be kept in your grocer's freezer, seems about to shut you out totally, an actor shows up to capture your attention. James Gammon, as an F.B.I. supervisor, sports a Panama hat suggesting that he thinks of himself as a style maven. He commands the screen with his gravelly warmth.

Mr. D'Onofrio dominates in his own way. In a cue taken from Thomas Harris, Stargher has been conceived as a monster and as an object of pity; we see his memories of the abuse he endured as a child.

Mr. D'Onofrio plays him as more than a monster; he's scared and tired, desperate to leave his burden behind. Mr. Vaughn has his moments, too, and doesn't rely on his baby-face charm to get him through.

The material can't help building a sense of dread, and special-effects technology has never been better at the manufacture of maiming. Stargher walks around with rings hanging from his back; he likes to hover above his victims, suspended by chains.

But at no point do you feel frightened, despite rivers of blood, entrails stretched out of a living person and a vivisection of a horse by huge panes of glass while its exposed organs still function.

Each frame has been composed like a still. And when the actors move across the screen, they often look like toys in motion.

Much has been written about bad taste in comedy, but few seem to note the institutionalization of cruelty in dramas. When Buñuel pulled a razor blade across an eyeball in "Un Chien Andalou," he was using surrealism to make a point about the most primal sort of invasion. Today such a feat would be staged merely for kicks, to titillate an audience.

As the movie pops in and out of distinct scenarios, "The Cell" feels like a new video game: "Quake" as designed by David Fincher, the director of "Seven" and "Fight Club." Mr. Fincher's work comes from a specific sensibility, an artist's temperament working out assaultive rhythms.

Mr. Singh may have an artist's temperament, and he shows signs of being a director. The scariest scene in "The Cell" is the simplest: Stargher sits in his bathtub, playing with the water, spitting out mouthfuls and quietly singing "Mairzy Doats" to himself. You sit up as you realize you're watching a man capable of anything -- and Mr. Singh gets what he wants without resorting to the flamboyance of the director's cut of Nine-Inch Nails's "Closer."

PRODUCTION NOTES

'THE CELL'

Directed by Tarsem Singh; written by Mark Protosevich; director of photography, Paul Laufer; edited by Paul Rubell and Robert Duffy; music by Howard Shore; production designer, Tom Foden; produced by Julio Caro and Eric McLeod; released by New Line Cinema.

Cast: Jennifer Lopez (Catherine Deane), Vince Vaughn (Peter Novak), Vincent D'Onofrio (Carl Stargher), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Dr. Miriam Kent), Jake Weber (Gordon Ramsey), Dylan Baker (Henry West), James Gammon (Teddy Lee) and Tara Subkoff (Julia Hickson).

Running time: 110 minutes.

This film is rated R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes profanity and scenes of unusually intense and vivid violence and torture.