Rated on a 4-star scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Entertainment on August 25, 2000; certificate 18; 108
minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Tarsem; produced by Julio
Caro, Eric McLeod.
Written by Mark Protosevich.
Photographed by Paul Laufer; edited by Robert Duffy, Paul
Rubell.
CAST.....
Jennifer Lopez..... Catherine Deane
Vince Vaughn..... Agent Novak
Vincent D'Onofrio..... Carl Stargher
Marianne Jean-Baptiste..... Dr. Miriam Kent
Jake Weber..... Agent Ramsey
Dylan Baker..... Henry West
Jake Thomas..... Young Stargher
"The Cell" is a horror film that knows what it means to be horrifying. It's not about a knife-wielding maniac running around in a ski mask. It's a question of hitting raw nerves. There are images in this movie that graphically depict child abuse and ritual killing, wrapped in special effects that recreate the hyperactive colours of dreams. None of this makes the picture sick -- it's just one of the few serial killer thrillers around that refuses to shy away from the implications of its material. After a decade of "Silence of the Lambs" imitations, each one more numbing than the last, that's what it takes for this kind of fare to have an effect.
Jennifer Lopez stars as Catherine Deane, a psychiatrist involved in revolutionary technology that uses electronic linking to literally bring doctors into the minds of their patients. In the film's opening scenes we get a glimpse of Catherine's therapy with a young boy she has developed a rapport with. Standing in his subconscious she tries to talk him out of his fears and demons, while getting to look at his visions of them, and the landscape they inhabit.
The thriller elements of the plot are introduced in a parallel story, in which the FBI capture a sadomasochistic killer named Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio), who keeps women in a glass cage for a fixed amount of time before an automated mechanism drowns them. Stargher then masturbates over their bodies while suspended by metal hooks pierced into his back, and douses them in chemicals to make their corpses resemble dolls. I'm lingering over these details to help you decide whether you can stomach them.
Stargher is found in a state of permanent coma after collapsing from seizure. The agent in charge of his arrest, a man named Novak (Vince Vaughn), has reason to believe that his latest kidnap victim is still alive, and since Stargher cannot be interrogated while unconscious, a police psychiatrist recommends consulting Catherine. She is persuaded to attempt delving into Stargher's mind on a hunt for clues.
Although they don't seem like it at the time, the early passages of "The Cell" could be considered clever in their lack of pace or rhythm, their choppy transitions, slow revelations, and shocking outbursts of violence and dementia. By the time Catherine penetrates Stargher's psyche, there isn't a sudden unconvincing shift in the way we're required to watch the movie -- we're already pretty disorientated. The scenes taking place in the psychopath's mind are the heart of the movie, with manipulation of colours, textures, shapes, dreamlike imagery, rules of physics and sound. To imagine it in terms of cheap comparisons, it's like Escher on acid after a Dali exhibition. Or "Labyrinth" with better cinematography and a purpose.
There are thematic and visual surprises sprung on the audience throughout. Stargher's imagination goes from being a parody of S&M gear and modern art (most memorably Damien Hirst's cow) to a sickening special effects show and eventually a painful world of deep psychological wounds. Catherine is trepidatious and endangered during her first steps around Stargher's universe, and we get to watch the process of her getting to grips with its overwhelming nature, efficiently exploring what she needs to, then doing her best to free Stargher from his own destructive urges. The conclusion finds interesting parallels between this and Novak's efforts to liberate the abducted girl; we care about both plot strands because both mean a lot to the characters involved, who are our entry points into the narrative.
It is no wonder the director, Tarsem Singh, chose to be credited only as 'Tarsem'. He probably wanted to show how wrung out he felt after creating such an overpowering movie. "The Cell" is not perfect -- at times Vince Vaughn's performance crosses from passionate to overwrought, and the screenplay can't decide whether to flesh out the Lopez character's background or let us simply care about her because she's the key protagonist. (We get a lot of moody shots and snippets of conversation, but no real detail about her personality.) On the other hand, what works does so amazingly well. It occurred to me how much I had been affected by the film's horrors in the lavatory after the screening: I washed my hands, put them under the dryer, and realised they were shaking.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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