HORROR MOVIE REVIEW: THE CELL


It’s day two of my HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE where I have to see a horror movie a day during the month of October and write a short review for each one.

Today's film is CELL, based on the best selling novel of Stephen King and many years in the making. It tells the story of a virus transmitted by the mobile phone signal that first transforms people into violent maddies and then – to something else entirely.

The main problem of CELL is that it's at heart is a zombie movie. And we can get much better entertainment from an average episode of Walking Dead. The novel was written and gained its popularity before the new wave of zombie fashionability . Also Stephen King’s screenplay is lacking both depth and the thrills of action. Stephen King can describe entertainingly how someone brushes his teeth, but the movie is a new world entirely, and famous Author’s screenwriting have had some duds in the past (the worst, probably, is his post apocalyptic yawn MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE).

The main protagonists played by John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are sort of just there. As the heroes of the story they are not inventive enough, nor are they charismatic enough for us to care. Stephen King also promised to give the conclusion in the film, that he had avoided in the book… As for me, he should have left things as they were, I do prefer the incomplete but hopeful message of the original.

CELL may be a must see for the fans of the novel, but otherwise it seems too generic and too incomplete to enjoy. This is a case where the bare skeleton of the story exposes all that is wrong with it. Considering how engaging the book was, the film did not do it justice.

Score out of 5:
SCARE SCORE: 👻👻👻👻
GORE SCORE: 🗡🗡🗡
FUN SCORE: 🎃🎃



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