Tod Williams
Cell

Let's cut to the chase, “Cell” fits perfectly into the category of the most classic Zombie Movie and I will analyze it as such. The protagonist, far from his family, finds himself in the midst of a “viral/technological” outbreak where humans are turned into conscience-less killers; he finds survival companions, who gradually increase and decrease during the narrative towards the achievement of a safe haven, which in reality does not prove to be so. A subject that recurs as a topos in zombie movie plots. And though banal and overused, this classicism is one of the few positive points of the film: the atmosphere created in the pre and post-apocalyptic climate is always tangible, able to fully immerse you in the context of the narrative and especially make you conflict with the decisions and choices made by the characters. Characters who, as in any "zombie film" worth its salt, are one-dimensional, although elevated by Cusack and Jackson, the second positive point of the film. Random Tarantino-style references aside, the film, aside from that type of atmosphere, does not live on cinematic past references and this could be a risk. It is not a Romero film starting from the conception of “zombie”: these creatures can be placed in the “infected” category, therefore not deceased. The virus that infects them is transmitted via mobile phones, but who created it and what nature it has is not revealed. This "impulse" makes the creatures interconnected, turning them into a swarm, a single organism controlled remotely by a pack leader, who is named the “President of the Internet”. And it is here that, in my opinion, an enormous gap in the script emerges: Cusack is a writer and graphic novel artist and, somewhat unclearly, he would have foreseen and depicted the apocalyptic events, materializing a dream that will become common to all characters. The film thus pushes us towards a single direction: Cusack is the key, a sort of chosen one to whom all events are bound. A hypothesis reinforced by the fact that the “telepats” often use the protagonist's son's voice. However, this narrative stance is completely without resolution in the film because we are not told anything about the virus, the comic/prophecy, or the connection between the course of events and the protagonist. Themes that remain in an overly superficial state that are completely undermined by an ending that reveals the director's fear of making a concrete decision, almost covering his back from possible criticisms.

And here comes the direction… a complete disaster. It could have been expected, really, from a director coming from Paranormal Activity, where no direction exists. Every action scene is incomprehensible, the camera is left to itself, paralleled by an excessively rapid editing where you can't deduce space and time where an event occurs. A bit of steady cam would have sufficed, and at least half of the shots would have been more effective. The direction stabilizes during moments of calm and dialogue, but the constant and annoying sensation of a mise-en-scène deriving from the POV and from the genre that has become so fashionable in recent years, the Mockumentary, remains. A direction that likely sank a subject and a script that on paper had enormous potential, at the base of which is Stephen King. Yet this way of narrating does not seem to derive from an author of this caliber: the tension is very low, further worsened by heavy tone drops in some scenes.

The last point that at least allowed me to heave a sigh of relief is the social intent, which fortunately is not present. I expected a philosophy or a trite moral on the use of mobile phones or on how technology has made us “zombies”, but fortunately, the film does not delve this low, eliminating this component.

In conclusion, the film is mediocre, absolutely forgettable, but lovers of the genre will surely appreciate it, also because it is impossible not to love that atmosphere any Zombie Movie creates. Except for Snyder's, he should be arrested for that one.

We now find ourselves in a sort of cinematic Renaissance as far as zombies are concerned, and with that horrid World War Z, the genre has also become a blockbuster with astronomical budgets. This is what I wonder: will the authorship and the social and political value return as in Romero's masterpieces?