Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on August 17, 2000, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Has there ever been a serial killer in real life with such an elaborate, fetishistic m.o. as those in the movies? From major-studio fare like The Bone Collector to direct-to-video dreck like Resurrection, this subgenre has recently presented villains whose motivations and methods are increasingly, bizarrely—and implausibly—elaborate in a strange game of twisted one-upmanship. The Cell finds a way to further heighten the strangeness without violating believability: It confines the real weirdness inside its murderer’s head, and sends its heroine, child therapist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) inside his twisted mindscape in hopes of uncovering the whereabouts of his latest victim. It’s a credit to director Tarsem Singh and writer Mark Protosevich that, even as the movie assails the viewer with strange, eye-filling visions, the horrible reality of the murderer’s crimes is not trivialized.
And it’s a credit to Singh that, even as he drenches the film in the surrealistic style that put him on top of the commercial/music video scene, he keeps his focus on the story. Unlike so many filmmakers spawned from that world, who Cuisinart their images into numbing barrages of split-second shots, Singh knows how much weight to give each sequence and uses his fast cuts judiciously. After introducing us to the scientific process that allows Catherine to enter the subconscious of others, and establishing her empathy for troubled children, the movie becomes a tense and efficient thriller following FBI agent Novak (Vince Vaughn) as he tracks down psychopathic Carl Stargher (Vincent D’Onofrio).
A stroke renders Stargher comatose just before he’s captured—and since his m.o. is to imprison women in an automated cell that floods with water after a couple of days, and he has just abducted another victim, time is of the essence. It falls to Catherine to venture into Stargher’s mind and attempt to uncover the woman’s whereabouts, but once inside, she’ll have a hard enough time just surviving a demented kingdom where Stargher appears in any number of disturbed and/or outlandish incarnations.
The basics of the police procedural here are familiar (with perhaps one too many visual echoes of Se7en by the climax) but well-handled, and while Stargher’s background as an abused child is also none too fresh, it’s developed in intriguing ways through Catherine’s journey. The more she gets into the madman’s head, the more she becomes just as intent on saving his (literal) inner child as she is on rescuing his real-world victim. This lends extra dramatic weight to the proceedings and elevates the movie into more than an eye-candy store, and Lopez approaches the role with the right combination of sympathy, determination and vulnerability. D’Onofrio is fine and fearsome as the villain, and Vaughn, while awkward in the early scenes, grows nicely into the character, particularly during an exchange with Lopez in which the suggestion (wisely not elaborated on) is made that Novak is himself an abuse survivor.
Of course, even as the film’s dramatic qualities are praised, it should be noted that The Cell is also seriously cool to look at. Singh, production designer Tom Foden, costume designer Eiko Ishioka and makeup creators Michele Burke (the latter two also teamed on Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and KNB whip any number of stunning, startling sights, and the copious CGI work never comes off as gratuitous flash. The mindscape scenes, in fact, are given a rough, off-kilter look that suggests A Nightmare on Elm Street as directed by the Brothers Quay, and there’s one bit involving a huge, billowing cape that’s 10 times neater than anything in Spawn. As movies continue to move into the digital age, and the temptation (and ability) increases to give the medium over to visuals at the expense of story, it’s nice to have films like The Matrix, Requiem for a Dream and now The Cell that get the balance right.
