The Cell: Review By moviegeek

If Inception and Saw had a baby, The Cell would be the closest thing to their offspring. Grisly and dark, yet intensely thoughtful and brain-powered, The Cell enters the mysterious nature of the mind in a troubling, yet gripping, psychodrama.

Jennifer Lopez is Catherine, a specialist in new technology that allows one to enter subdued minds. After pursuing and capturing a torturous killer, FBI agent Vince Vaughn wants to find where the killer placed his victim, whose life is ticking down by a predestined clock. The killer, however, is in a coma, causing him to search out Catherine and her crew. Sending Catherine in, they hope to invade the mind of the killer to find any clue as to where the girl is.

Visually, this is a mesmerizing picture. The mind sequences are brilliantly choreographed and fantastically imaginative. Jennifer Lopez is also very good in a rather unusual role for her to play. I had my restraints towards Vince Vaughn, but I suppose he plays the role well enough.

The levels that make up this film are singularly intriguing, but together, they supersede each other. For example, there are sequences where a character will be stuck in the mind (I almost said dream, hah.) and the team on the technological side will discuss sending in someone else. This needless yammering about who should go in really isn't very interesting or tense. I just wanted to go back into the far more interesting mindtrap.

That is the whole pace of this film. The visuals supersede any story or reality. The tension and grisly pace of the mindmaze is so troubling and fascinating that to break from its pace shows only how one-sided the movie became. Now, obviously, the one side more heavily favored is greatly done. I wasn't a fan of the torturous moments within, but they are in the mind of a serial killer after all.

The two films I compared it to above were both made years after this one. Saw, a wretched addition to the film world, shows the darker and more grisly nature of this film (though in here, it is employed slightly more tactfully). Inception is a superior film to this by far. Each level is interesting and the minds of the characters carry over between the dream levels. Here, they inhabit different characters than who they are in the real world. That method works, but it detaches the mind from the reality.

The Cell works as an engaging thriller with lots of imagination and intensity. It has flaws, but to discredit the movie for what I thought about it after the viewing experience would be to cheat the movie of what film is supposed to do. While I was watching, The Cell was fascinating, intriguing, and pretty darn cool.