Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This review contains spoilers.Cell is directed by Tod Williams from the Paranormal Activity movie series. It stars John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, and Isabelle Fuhrman as apocalypse survivors. A mysterious signal hits every cellular device causing its victims to devolve to their base instincts. This causes modern society to crumble as much of the population is connected at the time of the event known as The Pulse. Clay Riddell, played by John Cusack, is one of the survivors of the event and he embarks on a journey to find his loved ones. Alice, an upstairs neighbor, and Tom, a subway driver join him in his trek.Cell has numerous problems as a movie. The immediate problem with the movie is its technical incompetence. The movie has poor CGI effects and some of the most jarring editing. The scene transitions are accompanied by the strange music choices. One of these bizarre technical choice s is at the introduction of the movie with large black bars with text that block up most of the screen to introduce credits. The movie cuts in ways that do not make sense. After The Pulse is triggered, Clay is chased by phoners. One of them tackles Clay and then the movie transitions to Clay getting up easily with the phoner nowhere to be found. The effects in general are also fake looking and whenever gore is shown, it is incredibly obvious that it is an effect. The violence in the movie is also tame. Another strange moment is when Clay is driving into Kashak and the movie plays intense music and cuts to ducks in a pond.The antagonistic phoners in this movie are a source of unintentional comedy. From the beginning with the airport sequence, the strange behavior of the phoners can be seen. The audience can see some of them dangcing while others attack the normies. The movie cuts to a clip of a phoner foaming on a toilet. When the phoners chase Alice, Clay, and Tom through a forest one of them only has a tennis racquet and underwear. One of the phoners even runs into a tree despite the movie establishing that they have created a hive mind. Another scene has a large group of phoners pack themselves into a football field to switch off. The group then plays the viral video song, Trololo, as they sleep. In many moments, the phoners have a white noise effect in their speech which adds to the unintentional hilarity. These are noth the only scenes that rae strange and to see more, one can watch the movie.The plot of the movie is inconsistent. The movie hints at the Raggedy Man's influence on the group and remaining humans. At the end, it appears it was all a construct of Clay Riddell's mind. The movie constantly pulls the audience in these circles, but ultimately comes back to Clay's story. The Raggedy man and his flock of phoners are some of the best unintentional comedy I have seen. The phoners typically run around in circle when they are idling. They also communicate through digital warble that simply has to be experienced.The main cast is horribly misused. John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are great in 1408 but in this movie they are ineffective. Likewise Isabelle Fuhrman is not used well here. The actors do not have any stand out moments. All of their dialogue is generally bland. None of this is the cast's fault as I believe they had executed the script to the best of their ability. The main faults that caused the disaster are the poor writing, directing, and editing. The choices in this movie are baffling.Cell is a terrible movie. Unless you are interested in an unintentionally funny movie, I do not recommend viewing it.

This movie is just awful. Not a single good thing about it. I remember being so excited when they announced a theatrical adaptation of Cell, because like it was one of his most underrated stories as well as one of the few that HADN'T been made yet. And then they threw in massive stars like Sam Jackson, John Cusack, and Stacy Keasch? But they messed it all up! This movie is absolutely nothing, NOTHING like the original story, except for the very vague plot and character names. The book was filled with mystery and thrills but nope, not this movie! I guess maybe the creators thought using the original source material was a bad idea? If that is the case then WHY EVEN MAKE A MOVIE VERSION AT ALL??? I understand changes must be made but why change everything?? This movie is not smart or scary at all, no thrills or chills, just boring. SO BORING. The actors are so bored and have the same "yeah, whatever" faces. Sam Jackson is the only character with personality, and that is because he is just playing Sam Jackson. The story is also super confusing and makes no sense. Oh and the CGI is almost as bad as Jeepers Creepers 3...yeah, that bad. It looks like it belonged in a cartoon on Nickelodeon! So yeah, bad movie. And the ending is a huge middle finger to anyone who liked the book. Just...wow...what an awful movie.

Another zombie movie. That should say it all. Yes, Stephen King is one creative writer and his solution to the zombie plague at least makes sense. But this movie turns the sense into yet another anti-technology sermon. And it is slow, so slow.

There was a really good idea here. Instead of zombies we have cell phones making people into a homicidal, flocking, mass organism and a small band of interesting protagonists remain trying to survive, make sense of it and possibly combat it. The first hour is very good and then it takes an abrupt nose dive into a 'shocker' ending, that is not shocking but stupid and a case of bad writing.Many writers seem to suffer from this syndrome of getting painted into a corner by their interesting high concept and then just bailing out rather than hunkering down and figuring out how to write a decent ending.None of the big questions are answered as to how this came about even though the characters spend a good bit of time speculating about it. There is some suggestion of a psychic 'The Stand' type connection and a Randall Flagg type, hoody wearing bad guy who may be controlling all of it, that goes absolutely nowhere and then the main character goes off in what seems to be a mission of self-sacrifice only to have it get turned around into a very unsatisfying ending that solves nothing. I often wonder how people read these scripts and don't realize there's no 3rd act.It was nice to see Jackson teamed with Cusack again. They should really do some Hope and Crosby type buddy movies and the teenage girl, Isabelle Fuhrman was good in what was essentially a throwaway role but bad writing sinks this one. Too bad.