The Cell (2000)
Directed by Tarsem Singh
A psychotherapist journeys inside a comatose serial killer in the hopes of saving his latest victim.
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20 films that influenced The Cell
What critics say influenced The Cell
Protosevich's script borrows heavily from The Silence Of The Lambs, with Singh adding the dreamlike imagery of Altered States.
The basic story of The Cell is somewhat pedestrian, and can best be described as a watered down version of The Silence of the Lambs.
Despite the obvious plot similarities to "The Silence of the Lambs," it really doesn't seem like too bad a setup for a film.
This is The Silence of the Lambs for people who find Jodie Foster and Jonathan Demme too thinky.
Take "The Silence of the Lambs," a similar themed FBI/psycho-killer crime drama.
The Cell has been dismissed by some as just another serial killer movie but I defy anyone to view it back-to-back with The Silence of the Lambs and find any but the most superficial similarities.
Graham's special gift -- what endears him most to his superior, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) -- is the ability to get inside a killer's mind; not literally, as Jennifer Lopez did in The Cell, but by looking at the evidence and patterns of behavior and allowing himself to "become" the killer in theory.
It echoes Manhunter (1986), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Seven (1995), as well as all the other, more forgettable serial killer movies of recent years (The Bone Collector comes to mind).
"Manhunter" arrived early in the serial killer trend, after Ted Bundy but before films like "Seven" and "The Cell" romanticized smart sociopaths.
To my mind The Cell is the best movie since that staple of 1930s surrealism Un Chien Andalou to capture the state of dreaming.
If Tarsem Singh ever had a blueprint to model "The Cell" after, his original film source would clearly be Luis Bunuel's mesmerizing "Un Chien Andalou," in which every grotesque moment was a powerful metaphor for the unfortunate toll that schizophrenia had taken on a person.
Catherine straps on a leather bodysuit that may be leftover from David Lynch's Dune, suspends herself from wires like in Coma, and through a combination of pharmaceuticals and microchips transfers her mind into Carl's (who is similarly gotup, but you probably would rather think of Lopez in skintight leather than D'Onofrio, right?).
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The story is a little bit similar to that of "Brainstorm," a 1983 film which also had great special effects (designed for wide screens and 70 millimeter projectors).
Slipping into a rubber body suit hooked up to all sorts of sensors, Catherine can tap into the thoughts and memories of another person, a la Christopher Walken in "Brainstorm" or Lori Singer in the short-lived TV series "VR.5."
Like director Ken Russell's classic "Altered States," "The Cell" will almost certainly become a must-see among filmgoers who like to take in movies while under the influence of one substance or another.
Sure, it mixes "Se7en" leftovers with a dash of "The Matrix" and a taste of "What Dreams May Come", but the movie remains wildly original if only for the unique sights it packs.
Rarely do greater themes or purposes validate such films (Se7en is an extremely rare exception), and The Cell is no different.
This visual piece alone soon started a trend in films such as “The Cell”, “Red Dragon” and “Kiss the Girls” that incorporated some from of scrap book or collage displays.
On another level, the movie is a wildly visionary fantasy, in which the mind spaces of Stargher and Deane are landscapes by Jung out of Dali, with a touch of the tarot deck, plus light-and-sound trips reminiscent of " 2001: A Space Odyssey ."
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Eiko Ishioka, one of the film's two credited costume designers, is not only a celebrated artist in her own right but the Oscar-winning creator of Bram Stoker's Dracula's inimitable cloaks, gowns, and armors.
Awash in hyperstylized set-pieces and costuming (courtesy of Eiko Ishioka, whose work here references her previous outing in Bram Stoker's Dracula) that would make Queen Amidala look positively pedestrian, The Cell is perhaps the best argument so far against film-inclined young people growing up coddled by MTV.
Making his feature debut, music video director Tarsem Singh (REM's "Losing My Religion") hired costume and effects people with movies like "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and "Fight Club" on their resumes, and they certainly earn their keep.
Dylan Baker and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, best known from Happiness and Secrets & Lies respectively, play scientists in charge of an experimental, psychotherapeutic technology by which a specially trained case worker can "enter" the mind of a schizophrenic and/or comatose patient.
Featured in supporting roles are Marianne Jean-Baptiste (1996's "Secrets & Lies") and Dylan Baker (1998's "Happiness"), as the two scientists who head the project of synaptic transfer; Jake Weber, as Peter's partner, Gordon Ramsey; and Tara Subkoff, who manages to be powerful in only a few small scenes, as Carl's last victim, Julia Hickson.