Cell
Would have been a lot more horrific if I did not love me smart phone so much.
When I saw the poster for the movie, my first thought was that it was an action movie starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson about a splinter cell. For some reason I find that appealing, Although Gross Point Blank is an amazing film and if John Cusack’s role in this action movie I dreamed up was similar to his role in Con Air and he’s just on the poster to sell tickets, that would have been OK as well.
As it turns out, it’s a Sci-fi horror story by Stephen King who co-wrote the script based on his story. Still sounds worth seeing. It’s not the first time Cusack, Jackson and King did a movie together (in a movie called 1408), so it got me interested.
So the movie starts out in an airport where Cusack’s character, Clay is talking to his ex-wife on a cell phone. When she puts his son on the phone it runs out of juice forcing Clay to use a payphone (lucky him)
Have you ever seen the film, The Lawnmower Man? Though I’m stretching here cause I think the idea is cool that both Stephen King stories are connected, but the end of that movie becomes the beginning of this, as every one using their Cell phone at that particular time is hit with a pulse that turns them into raging lunatics killing everyone who did not hear the pulse.
Clay figures out pretty early during the insanity that it’s the cell phones causing it. Clay (with the help of a cool cameo from Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman) try to convince a girl not to use her phone to call for help, but she does and goes berserk.
Running for his life Clay meets Tom, played by Samuel L. Jackson and the two end up at Clay’s place along with a young female who is Clay’s next door neighbor.
They have a brief talk about what’s going on and make a plan to go find Clay’s family.
So it turned out to be an action movie with Cusack and Jackson going up against….well….Zombies. Not the traditional ones similar to George Ramero’s version, but more so like the shit that went down in 28 Days Later. The zombies start out as raging savages killing anyone not under the spell but soon they develop a way to convert the unconverted.
Stacy Keach is in the movie as the character that gives the best explanation of what’s going on, some plan by persons unknown to unify us into a hive mind . He’s seems to be up for the kind of peace that would bring (It would be interesting if the hive mind would have created the same end game as in the film Colossus: The Forbin Project) while Clay, a pacifist graphic novelist is not. This pulse attack also has a weird effect on Clay’s mind who has a strange connection to it.
It was a good movie, how could it not be as it’s based on a Stephen King story, right? It seems that Mr. King may have a thing about cell phones, this is were the story’s purpose kind of fails. It was cool watching Cusack and Jackson brave though the apocalypse, meeting some allies on the way and trying to figure out where to go and what’s going on. That works, but the horror does not, at least not for me.
When the movie ended and the credits rolled the first thing I did was pull out my cellphone. I love my Cellphone (sorry, I’m not gonna lie about it). If you love your cellphone or are so use to it it’s like water to you, then the Horror this movie tries to lay on you will go over your head.
Visually, it’s a great King story told. there are images in the movie, where we watch the Zombies act like a hive mind that are creepy in the King style of creepy (stay until the credits end, that part is really creepy) but most of that was lost on me cause like I said, I like my cell too much. Plus, I have AT&T, so most likely I would never get the pulse signal that turns people into zombies.
So it’s a decent movie, not met to change the world but cool to watch.
