Cell

#StokerScore 2/10

Imagery.... 

Carrie White, bathed in pig's blood, channeling the full extent of her telekinetic powers. Little Danny Glick, floating outside his friend's bedroom window, begging to be invited in. The gurgling voice in the storm drain saying 'they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too–'

"Sam Jackson was GREAT in The Big Game...."

There is a photo of Stephen King in every dictionary in the world next to the word prolific. Not only does he write amazing fiction, he does it consistently. Whether writing under a pseudonym, collaborating with another author, or just amusing himself, the guy is at the very least a hard worker whose writing creates enough dread to fill a lifetime's worth of nightmares.

His books have been read by millions, translated into umpteen languages and even his son has decided to follow in Dad's illustrious footsteps. This family connection may well prove to be prophetic if Joe Hill's (King's son) movies of his work continue to be on a par with some of his Dad's because the problem sure as hell isn't with the book writing, it's the movie adaptations.

Many* seem to agree that the Daniel Radcliffe-starring Horns wasn't a great movie, but it was a million times better than much of Stephen King's book-to-movie translations. (*Horns scores 41% over at Rotten Tomatoes) but compare that to Pet Sematary (43%), Needful Things (26%) or 2011's Pierce Brosnan-starring Bag of Bones which nobody has even bothered to review in five years.

50% of the 1408 audience felt the same way as you, John

The first heckler will no doubt notice that I'm cherry picking the worst and they'd have something of a point <cough> The Tommyknockers <cough>. King's written work has also produced absolute classics like The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and, of course, Misery.

The second heckler may point out that King isn't responsible for how his books are translated into movies, but he is responsible for the screenplays to Sleepwalkers, Maximum Overdrive and this latest movie, Cell.

Imagine for a moment that the guy who created  The Dark Tower, collaborated on the creation of Jack Sawyer, and whose genius gave us the murderous Plymouth Fury, Christine, is also responsible for getting John Cusack and Sam Jackson to answer phones that have just turned people into murderous zombies and inexplicably reduced the population of Boston from 667,000 to 30 people waiting for Darwin Award levels of stupidity to bring them their next victim. It's hard not to lay some of this blame at the script doctor's door.

I'm not really knocking Stephen King though, the guy is a genius writer in my book whose literary work has given me hours of pleasure, but I am knocking the complete disregard of all involved towards making a great movie. Cusack is making a habit recently of channeling his inner Cage (Nicholas, not Luke), Jackson looks completely bored, and the director shouldn't be allowed near anything more dramatic than a school play ever again. And is it me, but why did this movie need to be executive produced by thirteen people? including Mr Cusack? Maybe that's what pushed Eli Roth away from directing it...

This is unfortunately the worst film I've seen this year..... and I've seen Zoolander 2