When Stargher, a serial killer who drowns his victims in torture cells and performs bizarre rituals with their bodies, falls into a coma, an FBI agent persuades a social worker, who can experience what is happening in another person's unconscious mind, to enter the mind of the killer in order to learn where he has hidden his latest kidnap victim.
Tarsem uses the dramatically shallow plot to create a dream world densely packed with images of beauty and terror that cling to the memory even if you don't want them to.
Suite101.com
September 25, 2010
Sigmund Freud's description of the id as "a cauldron full of seething excitations" could just as easily apply to this literal exploration into the darkest, filthiest corners of a serial killer's mind. A chilling journey into dark religious iconography.
The trippy, highly mannered, widely referential imagery is certainly its strongest selling point, despite wonderfully grounding (and, on the rides, bizarre) work by Lopez.
The Cell is a dazzling mind-bender of a film that features spectacular visuals from the elegant sets to the gorgeous costumes, all encompassed in a thrilling story that will have you on the edge of your seat.
Lopez is hard to take as the empathetic psychologist who uses a synaptic transfer machine to penetrate the comatose killer's tortured psyche in hopes of finding his latest victim.
