The Cell

Tarsem Singh’s directorial debut is a solid case study for his larger film career: a series of alluring, hypnotic surrealistic images that are awash in painterly light and composition in search of a coherent narrative to contain them. His films characters fluctuate depending on how strong an actor he sticks in them. The better the actor the stronger the final product.

The Cell is misplaced as Vincent D’Onofrio, Dylan Baker, Marianne-Jean Baptiste are stronger than Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn. We end up feeling something close to empathy for the murderer thanks to D’Onofrio excavating his psychic wounds and scars when we’re supposed to fear for Lopez or Vaughn. They’re blank slates, Lopez functioning as a clotheshorse and Vaughn just all wrong as the white knight, that move about the frame that’s overpowering them with its multitude of incident and detail.

The plot, as much as there is, concerns Lopez as a child psychologist who uses an experimental treatment with her patients. A specialized suit, essentially an avant-garde take on human muscle structure, allows her to enter her patient’s mind, so she uses it to explore the mind of a serial killer. Along the way, we’re treated to a series of experimental shorts that function as backstory to the serial killer and excuses for violence and grossly misogynistic imagery.

The Cell is just not smart enough to deal with the issues it stumbles upon at various points. Child abuse, sexual violence, and grand guignol horror imagery get a workout here, and while some scenes are enthralling others are grossly off-putting. Singh’s films are individualistic and contain a certain style that has the hallmarks of auteur cinema, but without the brains to back it up. There’s nothing quite like his cinema, but he often mistakes an overabundance of style for a type of substance. These are not the same thing.