CELL (2016) Dir: Tod Williams

The long awaited adaptation of Stephen King's best selling novel Cell is upon us. Featuring a cast including Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack, Cell is a trill a minute Zombie survival horror....or is it?....Check out my review after le jump....

I'm a light reader, to be totally honest, I don't have the patience to sit down and read a complete novel from front to back, I think I've read maybe a hand full of books in my 30+ years as a human, those include I AM LEGEND, WISEGUY and some pulp detective novels, nothing fancy in all honesty.
I've attempted, several times I might add, to read a Stephen King novel and I can never get past the first few chapters, it's not that I find King a terrible writer, quite the opposite actually, I think he's a great writer, I love his ideas but I just can't make it through a King book, however, I get my King fix through film and TV adaptations, I've seen The Stand more times than I can count and I love films like Carrie, Christine, The Mist and The Shawshank Redemption. I followed Under The Dome for 2 seasons before my mind almost exploded but I enjoyed that, Storm Of The Century is great fun, It, Bag Of Bones, Golden Years, Rose Red and Big Driver are some good King TV adaptations so I was eagerly anticipating the film version of King's “zombie”novel, Cell.

After years in development hell with Eli Roth attached to direct at one point and even the possibility of it becoming a 6hr mini series, I'd almost given up hope, then the news broke that Tod Williams, the director of Paranormal Activity 2 had signed on to direct from a script written by King himself, I was excited and also a bit worried, Paranormal Activity 2 was awful. Then in April this year, a trailer was released, the film starred John Cusack and Samuel L.Jackson. OK, so far not too bad, good actors. The film looked like a tense zombie chase film. Kinda like if The Walking Dead got a shot of adrenaline.

Then today, I saw the film. It was not what I was expecting. Having not read the novel I wasn't really sure what to expect, I was aware that the zombies were created via a Cell-phone signal and that it followed a group of people. What we got instead was a 98 minute zombie mash up of The Signal, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and some bonkers Twilight Zone episode with some unexplained supernatural elements. I'm still not sure what the hell I just watched. All I know is that it wasn't very good.

John Cusack plays a graphic novelist who gets caught up in an instant zombie noodle apocalypse at an airport. He escapes with train driver Sam Jackson. They meet the young girl who lives above Cusack, she tags along as John and Sam go in search of John's wife and child, traversing a wasteland full of roaming phone freaks, people turned into zombies by the dodgy signal. Then they meet up with Stacy Keach and a kid at an old Boarding school, they have dreams about a scarred man in a red hoody. They meet some zombie killers, they get John's house. No kid. Goes to a massive a Cell tower surrounded by the worlds biggest circle pit.

This film has almost no plot, what little narrative there is is strung together with cutaways of birds and scenery. The direction is sub-par but the cinematography at times is very nice, they do capture an apocalyptic America quite well. The look of the film has a gritty quality to it. Like I pointed out earlier, it felt a bit Walking Dead-ish with the woodland areas and empty streets in the winter.

The soundtrack is something else though, unintentionally or not, the songs used on the soundtrack are random as hell and have no relation to actual film, at one point internet meme sensation Eduard Khil's Trololol song plays and over the ending credits is You'll Never Walk Alone, not the studio version but a football ground version with the sound of the terraces singing in the background. It kinda takes you out of the film and that's not good.

John Cusack and Samuel L.Jackson seem to walk the film, it's a paycheck at the end of the day, Jackson just seems to phone it in, not really putting in much effort. Cusack on the other hand is his usual Awkward Cusack self, he's a great actor and i've loved him in everything from Better Off Dead to 2014's The Bagman, here he's just walking it, not really putting much of an effort in to honest and it does show.

Luckily, one member of the cast seems to in on the joke and decides to put a bit of effort in his role and that is Stacy Keach, in his very brief, almost cameo, appearance. Gotta love Keach whenever he's on screen.

I read that Cusack who was a producer and King were booted from the film after it finished filming and had no input into the final film. Maybe King's original script was much longer and a bit more heavy on plot and character.

It really upset me that there was next to no actual heart put into the film, it's a nothing movie, utterly pointless and im also kinda pissed that I was actually excited for it. It's a 2 star film at most.  

Rating : 2.0