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Remember how that totally awesome movie The Fall was totally funded out of pocket by the director, who'd only ever done one other movie? That other movie is The Cell, which I figure I should watch too... and hey, we have one of those nice DVDs that just goes straight to the menu, and no little menu loading animation or anything. Thank you DVD! OK, we've got someone riding a horse through the desert. Is it a weirdly stylized Alexander the Great? Don't know, because we keep focusing on the horse. Oh. It's Jenifer Lopez in a weird white dress. I'm thinking we're doing the whole in media res thing here. She's just kinda walking along the ridge of a big freaking sand dune, spoiling the smoothness with foot prints, and the soundtracks going kinda crazy. Now here's some kid on a lot with a reflecting mirror, and- holy %@#$ it's Bastian! Quick! Bastian! Tell us what you named the empress! None of us caught it, not even the people who made the horrifying sequels! Oh. Sadly he can't be understood here either. Anyway, apparently his toy boat is broken. Also, we're doing that whole Paprika dream therapy deal and... holy $@#% that is a hideous hideous bodysuit for dream diving in. It's like... a skintight but really thick red rubber thing styled to look like muscles. And seriously, it's weird how much this kid looks like the one from The Neverending Story. There's no way it's him of course, this movie is from 2000. And hey, there's the dad from Fido. More people need to watch Fido. I can't think of anyone I would not recommend see Fido. Go rent it you. Or stream it off Netflix, I know it's on there. Also? This movie has horrible volume issues.
So here's a more mundane desert, in Nevada or someplace, where some guy is checking on the uh... girl he decided to drown in a giant fish tank apparently. She's not quite dead it seems. And seriously, what's with the sound in this movie? It's not a recording volume issue, because the music is fine and I can hear it when someone takes a deep breath, but it's like every single actor is whispering and muttering at all times. Anyway, we have some plot exposition here. This whole dream diving thing is specifically a treatment for comatose people, to try and get them out of it. Anyway, the day's work being over, our protagonist goes home and smokes a big fat joint in front of her imac with no pants. Oh, and here's some boobs on that drowning victim real quick. Anyway, now she's lying down and watching some TV before bed. Specifically, she's watching frelling Fantastic Planet. Great, now I'M going to have nightmares. Which I guess is appropriate, because we ARE transitioning into her having some freaky nightmare about Bastian being some sort of seal-boy-monster.
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Meanwhile, here's how Mr. Psycho gets his jollies. OK, he has the girl he's drowned, and stripped, and soaked in bleach, lying on a table. Then he suspends himself from enough different meat hooks that I really really have to wonder how he did this with no assistant, naked, directly over her, and watches his security camera footage of her screaming while being lowered to her drowny death. Oh, he also makes them wear collars. Thanks for pointing that out Mr. Forensic Investigator. Anyway, now we have Mr. Psycho sitting in his car stalking his next victim. Also, here's the coach from Major League playing a police detective. He looks wrong in this role. Come to think of it, he seemed wrong in that one too. Dude's just got this really weird cartoonish look going on. But anyway, they're going to be tracking him by the fact that he has a pet albino dog.
Now... at this point here? I have to say it is REALLY weird that such an artsy guy ended up directing this. Because the script for this movie is so very very clearly in Silence of the Lambs Crime Thriller land despite the dream diving gimmick he really gets to go nuts with. Also, Ghost is totally in on it! OK, he was just stalking Victim #8, and she gets in her car, goes to back up, big thump, whimpering hurt looking dog behind her. She goes to check on it, gets KO'd by Psycho, then we see the thump was actually a brick placed behind her tire, and the dog gets up totally fine. This is a dog trained to fake being hit by cars to trap future drown-bleach victims. That's a smart doggie! Maybe he also helps Psycho get his meat hooks in and out! Also, these cops are bugging me. We've got Inspector Mustache, and we've got Inspector Vince Vaughn, who you may recognize from various bad comedies, but the guy who seems to be in charge is one of those generic guys I know i recognize from something but all I can say to describe him is that he looks like a way less interesting Bishop.
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So... the good news is, the cops have successfully tracked him down. The bad news is he's kind of having a stroke or an aneurism or something. So they all go busting into his house, and search it and eventually they find him uh.... passed out naked in the middle of the floor. Face down though luckily. They also totally arrest that evil albino dog. Gee, how bad do albinos have it in Hollywood these days? Even albino DOGS are monstrously evil. Doesn't seem to have any superpowers though. Anyway, now they're searching his basement for the girl he just abducted. Mainly they just find his fairly creepy doll collection though. Well, that and hi exceedingly elaborate masturbation setup with the drowning video and the ceiling hooks and all. What they DON'T find though is his giant fish tank. That's somewhere else. It's not filled with watch yet though. I guess step 1 is to just watch them freak out in there a bit, then he starts filling it the next day or something. Also, a neurologist tells us that he has this weird highly specific rare condition that puts him in a dreaming coma forever. OK. We've ALMOST set up the implausible conditions required for our plot, but there's one last step. Studying the death videos shows that there's actually an elaborate, fully automated process to flooding the fish tank after the victim has been in there for a few days getting dispensed food and water. You know, it strikes me that THAT'S a pretty easy way to track the victim down. I mean, you know who the killer is, and where he lives, right? He has to be getting billed for that flood chamber's power and water use, doesn't he? Even if he somehow built the whole thing himself in an abandoned building somewhere, there's some hefty and unusual utility costs here!
But no. Instead we have to go with the crazy dream machine approach. So we can wave goodbye to all these talented supporting cast actors now I guess. It's on with the creepy suits, and rambling about how only Dr. Bigbutt has the power to get stuff done in magical dream land. On the plus side, magical dream land looks neat. Well, not so much this part. This is just a flashback to Psycho's old school dunk you in a river baptism. Because he's got the whole drowning thing going on. Fun fact: What triggered his coma was fake drowning himself in the bathtub! So... Dr. Bigbutt is exploring now, there's a bunch of slow motion animals and water and dripping blood... and oh hey, it's the big long staircase from the new Silent Hill. Well, from the Wii Silent Hill I should say, there's a newer one in the works. Anyway, here's Psycho's inner child petting a horse in a room full of clocks... which are apparently counting down to when big plexiglass walls are coming down to slice the horse into still living free floating sections and pull them apart. It's pretty neat looking really.
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Oh, this movie's going to make me type fast aren't we. Here's a room full of creepy puppety girls with various dolly masks and.... oh dear gods it's Mari from Project A-Ko. Yeah, so a very very very unfeminine body builder snuck up behind Doc BB, conked her out, and dragged her over to Emperor Pscho. He has giant purple curtains hooked through his back hooks to basically create the most awesome cape ever. At THIS she screams. The sectioned horse and the puppet people, those were cool, but the dude sitting there all Ming the Merciless style, THAT was scary? THAT made her hit the panic button? What the hell? Anyway, Fido Dad explains that while using this technology, if you die in the dream you die in real life. Oh, and now it's time to start flooding the first tank too it seems. But oh hey, apparently we just get a quick blast of like a shower's worth of water each day. OK. That helps with the extreme water usage issue, but still, who gets the bill for that? Also SPEAK THE @$#% UP DR. BIGBUTT! You are in a movie! See that microphone? The one you're not supposed to look at? Yeah, you have to talk loud enough for that to pick up what you're saying. You have a bad singing career too, so you should at least be familiar with the concept at work here. Quit whispering! Anyway, she's talking to Inspector Vaughn who's giving some backstory of this horrible murder case he prosecuted as DA before joining the FBI, because he'd much rather catch total psychos before they horribly kill people, instead of making sure they get punished after. I uh... honestly don't see his logic. Isn't there MORE pressure on you that way? The case can be made that you're responsible for every death between when you're assigned and when you catch him. Prosecuting the only pressure is if you fail to convict, and that's usually a non-issue in the really graphic frelled up murders you're primarily concerned with.
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Anyway, time for dream dive #2 here. We're letting Ghost come lick his hand to hopefully get him into WHOSAGOODDOGGIE mode instead of let's murder girls mode. I don't see this working though, because Ghost totally helps with that. Anyway, suddenly, right when she's about to go in, or just after with the bad writing I'm sure is at hand, there's a partial power outage, and she has to wander over to the fuse box across the room and check circuits 6-12. We're... very specific on that for some reason. Anyway, she turns around and sees herself, realizing that yeah, we have bad writing at hand here. I can totally buy Psycho getting all controlly and reshaping the dreamscape, but he has never been in this room with his eyes open, and we made a big point earlier how this very specifically dumps the therapist into the patient's mind, and is not set up to go the other way around because they'd be unable to handle the shock. But anyway, now that we acknowledge we're in there, she's floating around, and asks Ghost to take her to the inner child, who seems way more reasonable than Ming.
He's fastidiously washing dishes, and drops one when she goes to talk to him. So now she's hiding in the closet,standing in a bucket full of water and eels, watching inner child get beaten by his abusive dad and put in creepy situations re: his stepmother, and being told it's NOT OK to play with dolls. Uh... who bought him those dolls exactly Mr. Homophobic Dad? Oh hey! Cute albino german shepherd puppy in flashback land! And more boobs belonging to Victim #1 in flashback land too. We've uh, advanced to a later flashback. Anyway, yeah. The person who wrote this is SO deep in Silence of the Lambs land that we have to mirror the whole gender issues angle there. Is this an official trope here? All transexuals are serial killers? Or possibly vice versa? I'll have to check later. Oh hey! It's Devil Man! Oh wow. Real honest to goodness hair horns? Maybe it really IS Devilman Man. Oh and now here's the bridge crew panicking, and thinking about using the backup dream diving interface to send someone in to rescue you. Anyone want to bet that anyone other than Inspector Vaughn is eventually going to be sent in? After all, he has no training or familiarity with this stuff. But he IS a cop. That means he can beat people up! That's totally better than being a psychiatrist in this situation. We're not one of those wimpy movies where your mental stats are more important in magical dream land. Oh, and anyone who took my bet now owes me money, because yeah, in he goes right away.
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So, cool transition here... makes me want to shout I AM INTERFACED! And that totally looks like an MP3 visualizer. Anyway, here we are in dream land. Wow Tarsem Singh really likes sand doesn't he. Here we've got 3 versions of Psycho's mom posing in some weird sand ridges expositing about how his dad kinda kidnapped him. And then apparently bought him a bunch of dolls and then beat him for playing with them. Man, you know who this is really a case for? Baby Boomerangutang! Anyway, he eventually finds Dr. Bigbutt looking all groovy and wearing some crazy mask. I would say it's really Psycho in disguise, but she's muttering so incoherently it HAS to be the real her. Anyway, she's got a big crazy collar chained to the wall, and rather than be all you're here to save me she's all makey outy. So she's clearly been Turned Evil or something here. While she distracts him, Psycho, in a new King Midas look sneaks up an knocks him out. Actually, he looks kinda like John Malcovich this way. And he's... using a golden pair of scissors to cut his intestines out. See, here's the script getting in the way again. We've got this cool artistically stylish scene here, but all the actual actions playing out clearly reflect some really boring and generic movie that was intended. On the other hand, my appreciation for the grooviness is somewhat hindered by the fact that we're going all "this isn't real, you have to wake up!" to slave Bigbutt here. I mean, this CLEARLY isn't real. You shouldn't have to explain that.
It works though, so now the two are out of weird costume, and are in the swank mental aquarium cube full of security camera quality mermaids. Inner child is here too. And oh hey, they have cool logos on them. But uh-oh here comes Adult Psycho version. But oh right. They have panic buttons, they can just leave. So... they do, and use the logo from the fish tanks to hunt the girl down. Huh. Guess we're done now? That was pretty anticlimactic. And we still seem to have some tension. Is Dr. BB just going to go back in and try to treat his inner child nicely for the heck of it? Because if so that's just terrible writing. Psychological treatment is all well and good but he's a serial killer. He's most likely going to get the death penalty no matter what at this point. Trying to defeat his inner evil is just tragic at best. That's what we're doing though. So here's her yanking Inner Child into Shoujo Angel Nun Land, And we've just got this gold and flowers scrollwork border growing all over the screen while she MUMBLES ALL HER LINES AGAIN WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU ARE THE WORST THING IN THIS MOVIE YOU TALENTLESS NON-ACTRESS! See? See how I'm typing in all caps there? See how when you read it it makes you think of shouting? Pretend your scrip is like that, and read everything nice and loudly, OK?
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Anyway, inner child switches briefly to normal adult mode long enough to tell some story about how he drowned a bird before moving on to people, because he was baptizing it, so he saved its soul right? And... what the hell? Evil Emperor Ming version comes along and everything goes all dark tinted, but then suddenly she's all in this black leather action movie dress with a golden crossbow and slow-mo fights him for a while. So... this is your psychological treatment? Find the personification of someone's more sinister nature and just... punch it in the face repeatedly? I admit it would be pretty awesome if that were actually how psychology worked. Anyway, she pulls out a big ol' sword, but it doesn't kill him because he's mentally coherent enough to know that this is just imagination land. Spock came along and touched his forehead and told him the bullets will not harm him and all that. Inner Child is all messed up though, but she knows enough about how his mind works to know now that the real trick is to use pink shoujo nun princess baptism magic! Oh and meanwhile Inspector Vaughn is out saving Victim #8 out in boring but sensible I assume it's the main plot in the script land. Anyway, she drowns his inner child which accomplished... absolutely nothing apparently? Because that entire last dream dive was completely and utterly pointless? And there was absolutely no possible way it could have any sort of positive outcome without some profoundly inconsistent writing? I mean, it's a bad script, but there aren't any plot holes THAT big in here.
We did apparently prove though that having the patient enter your own mental landscape where you actually have complete control of the environment and can make sure it's not full of scary nightmare fuel and going to kill you in real life, so she's going to apply that to her original patient. Meanwhile Skinner doesn't buy Mulder's report and insists they just gave him a bunch of drugs that triggered a memory of seeing the clue logo he already had, and all that dream diving hocus pocus is a load of malarkey. Oh yeah and the new treatment methodology works. And credits.
So... that's The Cell. That was pretty odd really. I mean, the script and the casting were just AWFUL. Visually though, it was really cool. I'm just picturing the director, who, again, went on to do the very nifty The Fall, getting handed this TERRIBLE thriller script and cast list and told he has to make this movie. And then he was all @#$% this lame boring stuff! I'm going to just concentrate on these poorly written dream diving sequences, and fill them with all kinds of awesome weird imagery, and who cares if it doesn't actually make sense at all in context. I could make a coherent piece of TOTAL garbage, or I can make an interesting piece of just MOSTLY garbage! Man, I hope some day someone has the good sense to just hand him a big budget and let him do his own thing with it. I can't imagine he can do the whole self-funded thing again seeing how like nobody went to see The Fall. I also feel bad for anyone who DID see The Cell here, because all he crazy visuals really did make for trailers that were SO much more interesting than the actual movie. But those sales then helped fund The Fall, so, hey.
