THE CELL A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2000 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
A triumph of style over substance, "The Cell" looks like the product of a meeting between that darling of the British Film Institute Peter Greenaway ("Prospero's Books," "The Pillow Book") and the costume designer for "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace." It's as if they got together one day and decided to make a horror film.
There are more elaborate gowns, sets, and funny goings on in "The Cell" than in all of the "Star Wars" pictures combined, and if Greenaway thinks he holds a monopoly on outrageous headgear and collars that stick way out to here, he's got another thing coming.
"The Cell," unfortunately, remains a mixed bag because for all of its strikingly creative visuals (think a high art version of "The Silence of the Lambs"), it's a bit of a non-starter in the storytelling department.
Jennifer Lopez plays a pretty psychologist who's recruited to "enter the mind" of a serial killer so that she can discover where he's stashed his latest potential victim. The psychopath is boldly played by Vincent D'Onofrio, looking remarkably like rocker Neil Young. The film's title refers to a nasty little chamber in which Carl Stargher (D'Onofrio) likes to hole up his victims (all women), eventually drowning them and turning them into dolls with some industrial-strength bleach. This sicko is also into body piercing and likes to suspend himself from chains with metal rings cutting into his flesh, just for grins you understand. He also has an albino German Shepherd and drives a Ford pickup which provides the FBI (in the form of a scruffy-looking Vince Vaughn) with a rather easy way of tracing him.
About that mind-entering stuff. Catherine Deane (Lopez) is employed by a bunch of company crackpots (among them "Secrets & Lies"' Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who have developed this dubious scientific method for allowing one person to engage with another, cerebrally. The technique is used for helping schizophrenic adolescents recognize and face their fears, such as in the film's opening sequence set in a desert. What the process amounts to is having the two willing (or not so willing in the case of the comatose Stargher) participants outfitted in blood-red Twizzler suits, suspended above the floor while cloths with chic microchip designs are laid over their faces, and cranking the knob until it hits eleven!
This process allows the filmmakers, former music video director Tarsem Singh among them, to spend most of the film buried inside Vincent D'Onofrio's head. Think about that for a minute. If the bulk of the film is all dream material, then they can go hog wild on the visuals, right? And hog wild they pretty much go. It's amazing stuff indeed, and if you've seen the prevalent trailer you'll get a good sense of what you can expect. (I liked the visual of the three women cloaked in monochromatic Medieval garb sitting in a plowed field, their heads held high to the sky with their mouths wide open like baby birds. They turn to talk to Vaughn's character but only for a moment, snapping their heads and mouths immediately back into an upright, open position. Now *that's* the stuff of dreams!)
But where's the story? There really isn't one. But for most of "The Cell" it won't matter; just sit back and enjoy the creepy, dazzling ride.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
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