Day 4 - Cell - October Horror Movie Challenge

CELL (2016)

They're like birds, they're acting like a flock of birds...

(There will be major spoilers so skip if you don't want to be spoiled)

Ohhhhhh boyyyyyy...alright.

So Cell is about a crazy event that happens one day to everyone using a cell phone. Something sends a pulse through the phone and turns the person using it into a crazy violent zombie like person. Except when you die, you stay dead. Clay, a comic book artist, is speaking to his wife (they're separated due to him being a typical male and having a mid life crisis and leaving) in the airport when his cell phone dies. Which is lucky for him. Because soon after everyone goes ape shit.

He runs down into the train stations only to run into a few survivors like him, he teams up with a train driver named Tom and the two of them leave among the chaos and get to Clay's apartment. That's when they meet Alice, a young girl who lives in the same building. She's just had to kill her mother and takes solace with Clay and Tom. Clay really wants to go find his wife and kid and see if they survived, and Tom and Alice go with him.

Along the way they start to learn more about the zombie pulse thingies and when they come upon a school where the headmaster and a student, Jordan, welcome them in they learn even more. The monsters migrate like birds, and they flock together too. They're one hive mind. At night they sleep in big groups across the country and emit music from their open mouths. At the school a big group of them sleep in the football field and Clay and Tom decide to douse them in gasoline and light them on fire. They destroy a massive group. But as they head on they start having nightmares about a man in a red hoodie and they start to realize that maybe killing that giant flock was a bad idea, because the hive mind thinks as one, and a chunk of it has been destroyed. There's also the rumors of a town in Maine where there's no cell service and it's safe for the survivors. Or is it a trap?

Alright...so what did I love about this movie?

• Frankly, not much. It was an alright film to watch and I'm a sucker for John Cusack movies. Obviously I've read this book a few times, so it's really hard for me to compare them because this movie doesn't come close. But what have we learned over the years? Stephen King books usually make shit movies.
• I liked Alice a lot, she was very sweet and didn't get super hysterical and annoying.
• The depiction of the monsters was pretty cool, especially when they're all moving in sync.

What I didn't love?

• Mostly all of it.
• The opening scene in the book when everything falls apart is breathtaking but in the movie they confined it to an airport, taking a lot of the wind out of the sails. They also didn't show much of the world wide destruction.
• In the book the villain is called The Raggedy Man which is super spooky but in this movie they named him....President of the Internet. And no, I'm not trolling you. THE PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNET. I choked on my own spit when I heard it the first time. And speaking of the President of the Internet...he basically played no role in this movie. Which was sort of stupid.
• THAT ENDING...I MEAN...WTFFFFFFFF....to all those people who complained about the book ending...ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? ARE YOU? 

Overall?

Look...this movie wasn't awful, but it also wasn't great. There was so many mistakes made along the way. Stephen King wrote the screenplay and created the new ending based on the complaints from the fans. Who were not me. I would NEVER complain about Stephen King books. I owe that man my LIFE. Originally Eli Roth was going to write and direct the adaptation but backed out due to "creative differences" which kills me deep inside. Could you imagine a Stephen King book adapted by Eli Roth? I'm drooling. And it's not the antibiotics I'm on. But they might be why I'm yelling so much.

The film was completed a long time ago and in 2015 when people started pushing for the movie, Cusack and King said they'd basically been pushed out of it. Which shows you what capable hands were holding onto this film. That's sarcasm.

Basically this movie is alright. I'd be interested to hear from someone who hasn't read the book and see what their opinion was. I tried to watch it without comparing it to the book because that's not really fair but the worse it got, the easier it got to compare.

Maybe skip this one?

Love you King! Love you buddy! Keep doing you!
 
Man I'm having a rough week with movies. Not a good start to the challenge. Maybe it's all up from here?
3/10

Stay Spooky!