All the clever visual effects in the world can't hide the fact that this is just a nasty piece about women in torment.
Comment
12/10/01
The Cell (2000)
45
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:139
Fresh:63
Rotten:76
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: The Cell offers disturbing, stunning eye candy, but it is undermined by a weak and shallow plotline that offers nothing new.
Runtime: 1 hr 47 mins
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Synopsis: A wild ride inside the mind of a serial killer, THE CELL is a movie that leads viewers on a strange visual and psychological journey. Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) is a child therapist working... [More]
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio, Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Director: Tarsem Singh
Reviews for The Cell
What does it say about a film when you come out going "well, it looked pretty nice"? Not much, in this reviewer's opinion.
01/01/00
Top CriticLopez is hard to take as the empathetic psychologist who uses a synaptic transfer machine to penetrate the comatose killer's tortured psyche in hopes of finding his latest victim.
02/09/06
Top CriticWith little room for either narrative detail or character development, Tarsem's exploration of a deranged mind soon loses momentum.
12/02/02
Though at times beautiful and always disturbing, this is strangely devoid of meaning.
01/01/00
Top CriticThis movie is bad in so many ways that it’s difficult to know where to begin.
10/30/02
The Cell is a horror film that knows what it means to be horrifying.
01/01/00
The story is great, the direction is superb but you keep wondering what the film would have been like if Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins were cast instead.
01/01/00
The cop/serial killer part of the story (written by Mark Protosevich) offers absolutely nothing of interest.
06/24/03
Put The Cell’s plot under a microscope and you’ll discover mutant DNA strands from a host of other films, most notably The Silence of the Lambs and Altered States.
01/01/00
I'm not sure what to think.
01/01/00
Seeing this movie is a bit like hearing a lengthy discourse on someone else's nightmare: It may mean a lot to him, but it soon becomes extremely tiresome to you.
01/01/00
Singh's big splash is essentially half a movie -- the half that looks great but that echoes like an empty room.
01/01/00
This is a mind-bending acid trip of a movie -- fresh, disturbing and inimitable.
05/14/03
A fascinating dreamscape of mythic imagery and Biblical undertones.
01/01/00
The Cell becomes the first serial killer feature in a long time to take the genre in a new direction.
01/01/00
The movie is so relentlessly unpleasant ... and so utterly full of itself that it doesn't succeed in doing anything more than invoking a Pavlovian retch reflex.
01/01/00
Singh has concocted a flick for people who think that mere sensation can sustain a movie, and who don’t require any more coherence than what can be gotten from flipping through a fashion magazine.
01/01/00
Really it's because Vincent D'Onofrio is in this that it's a must see - heck on on DVD
01/01/00
The Cell is far from a perfect movie. But it is the creepiest one I've seen since The Sixth Sense.
01/01/00
Latest News for The Cell
October 03, 2008:
Exclusive: The Fall - Tarsem's Visual Companion - Part 1
Its otherworldly story split critics down the middle, but none can argue with the power of its imagery. Opening in the UK this week, Tarsem's The Fall is one of the year's most... More...
June 14, 2007:
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December 01, 2006:
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In this week's Ketchup, the campy classic "Starship Troopers" may finally get a proper successor with Casper Van Dien returning for "Starship Troopers 3"... More...
September 25, 2006:
Toronto Wrapup: Senh, Jen And Tim's Raves And Rants From The Festival
We saw some great movies, some of them big ("Babel") and some tiny ("The Patterns Trilogy"). We saw some interesting failures ("The Banquet") and... More...
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