CELL (2016)

Studio:       Lionsgate
Director:    Tod Williams
Writer:       Stephen King, Adam Alleca
Producer:  Richard Saperstein, Michael Benaroya, Brian Witten, Shara Kay
Stars:     John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Owen Teague, Clark Sarullo, Anthony Reynolds, Erin Elizabeth Burns, Stacy Keach

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two men team up to survive when everyone in the world using a cellphone suddenly becomes part of a ravenous horde.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Artist Clay Riddell is on a pay phone with his estranged wife Sharon discussing a possible visit with his son Johnny when chaos erupts at Boston’s Logan Airport. People using cellphones at the time of the outbreak inexplicably turn ravenous and suddenly begin killing each other.

Aided by train conductor Tom McCourt, Clay escapes the airport through an underground tunnel. Clay and Tom regroup at Clay’s apartment. Distraught neighbor Alice Maxwell also comes to Clay’s apartment for safety.

The next day, Clay, Tom, and Alice begin making their way through the city on foot, arming themselves and fighting infected along the way. The trio discovers that infected humans behave with a hive mind influenced by cellular tower pulses.

Clay, Tom, and Alice make it to a private school where they meet headmaster Charles Addai and young student Jordan. The group learns that the infected become docile during darkness, though Addai warns that the infected are learning to adapt. On Addai’s direction, Clay and Tom set fire to a football field littered with entranced infected. Addai dies when the fuel truck used to ignite the bodies inadvertently explodes.

Clay, Tom, Alice, and Jordan stop at a drive-in theater’s snack bar to rest. That night, everyone dreams of a disfigured man in a red hoodie tormenting them. When they wake, Clay realizes that the figure everyone saw is the devil character known as The Raggedy Man that he created for his graphic novel.

Clay, Tom, Alice, and Jordan seek refuge in a tavern with the bartender as well as patrons Geoff and Sally. During the night, Sally becomes entranced by a signal emitted from the infected outside and she opens the door. Infected attack, killing Geoff, Sally, the bartender, and Alice.

Clay, Tom, and Jordan meet survivors Ray and Denise camping in the forest. Clay hears his son’s voice coming from a restrained infected, which Tom then shoots. Clay, Tom, and Jordan return to the road, joining Ray and Denise in their ice cream truck.

Ray insists that Clay is somehow the source of what is happening. Ray privately tells Clay that he has wired the truck with C4 as he gives Clay a cellphone that will trigger its detonation. Ray then commits suicide by blowing himself up.

Clay finally makes it to Sharon’s house. A message on the refrigerator tells him that Sharon turned while Johnny went to Kashwak to seek safety. Clay confronts the man in red in the attic. Tom helps Clay kill the creature, but the figure turns out to have actually been Sharon.

Clay dismisses Tom, Jordan, and Denise to search for a safe location. Clay then takes the ice cream truck back toward Kashwak in search of his son.

Clay finds a horde of entranced infected swirling in a circle around a large cell tower. Clay drives the truck to the center where he confronts and kills the figure in the red hoodie. After reuniting with Johnny, Clay triggers the truck detonation, destroying the tower and the surrounding infected.

Clay and Johnny walk along a road, following spray-painted markers intended to lead them to Tom and the others. The final shot reveals that Clay has actually joined the entranced infected circling the cell tower.

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Review:

The giveaway clue that “Cell” is a “what do we do this?” movie isn’t in the 10-year saga of initial announcement to final delivery.  It isn’t in the revolving door of writers and directors taking a crack at the project during that time.  It isn’t even in the two years of casting or two years between filming in 2014 and dumping it onto VOD in 2016.

Even without behind-the-scenes knowledge of its beleaguered development, “Cell” tells you it is going to be “cinema by committee” trouble with opening credits consisting of logo animations for two USA distributors, four production companies, and an additional sales representative.  From there, title cards list three co-producers, four producers, and a staggering 14 executive producers.  How many disparate parts and people were necessary to finally stitch this thing into a releasable motion picture?  From the look of things, at least one more.

Adapted from the same-named Stephen King novel, “Cell” involves the tired plotline of a put-upon man desperate to reunite with his family amid apocalyptic anarchy.  It’s essentially a zombie outbreak film, though one where survivors are only mildly invested in actually saving their lives.

The story starts at Boston’s airport where, inexplicably, everyone using a cellphone suddenly turns into a “28 Days Later”-like Muppet flailing arms, flopping about, and screaming unintelligible howls of attack.  The sequence is so silly, it includes Troma honcho Lloyd Kaufman as one of the panicking passengers, because what’s the harm in adding a campy cameo to the long list of things taking you right out of the movie?

On a post-9/11 planet, it’s impossible to imagine a passive reaction to a chaotic eruption of gunfire, mass murder, frothing mouths, and cannibalism inside an airport terminal.  Nevertheless, that’s exactly how John Cusack plays it as he stands nearly still wearing a look of nonplussed surprise instead of going ghost-white with horror, as if calmly considering, “I think I’ll see how this plays out.”

Helping Cusack navigate his path home is Samuel L. Jackson, similarly sleepy eyed over the possibility of a terrorist attack, chemical warfare, or viral infection of unknown origin.  Rational responses to such a threat might include finding the nearest television to acquire information or seeking organized shelter in a designated safe zone.  Not for these two.  Jackson pours himself a glass of scotch and slices an apple with an attitude of, “guess we’re in a wee bit of a pickle, huh?”

Whether dispassionate acting or disinterested directing is the greater culprit, characters couldn’t care less about the end of the world.  Performances are so casual, if you were to close your eyes and listen to dialogue alone, you’d swear you were hearing a half-speed rehearsal read-through where no one knew the camera was rolling.

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Scrounging up all these magnetic letters was easier than writing a simple note?

“Cell” is bafflingly edited to within an inch of being incomprehensible.  Exterior weather changes in places, but there is no sense of an actual timetable to the movie’s events.  Maybe the story takes place over four days.  Maybe 40.  Screen time certainly isn’t spent with anyone long enough to give a damn about a single person’s death.

Transitions routinely resort to random insert shots of inconsequential value: a roasting hot dog, airport arrival boards, a toilet seat cover dispenser in a bathroom stall.  Confusing cutting is then compounded by a handheld camera so excessively epileptic, even a “found footage” film would scream at the cinematographer to give it a rest.

“Cell” doesn’t know what to do with itself.  Misplaced moments of situational humor land more horribly than the airplane exploding in a CGI crash capable of making a video game cutscene cringe.  Digital smoke is also rendered so poorly, it’s a mystery why the movie insists on featuring it more than once.  A ridiculous dance party interlude, a sound effect worthy of earplugs for when the afflicted are in heightened throes of their cellular trance, and a complete lack of urgency resulting in a total absence of tension.  Every element is an opportunity for “Cell” to go out of its way to be annoying.

A legion of apocalyptic outbreak films already exists.  More than one of those even involves cellular signals infecting phone users (“Pulse”).  We also have the option of a more entertaining Stephen King adaptation starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson in “1408.”  All of which begs the question, exactly what are we supposed to do with “Cell?”

Review Score:  25

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