The Cell [2000]

AVC: It sounds like you were drawn to the serial-killer, pop elements of The Cell. But it also seems like those were the aspects people hated about it.

T: [Laughs.] You know, the serial-killer thing didn't interest me at all.

AVC: It seemed like viewers and critics all hated the plot and loved the visuals.

T: At the turn of the century, a studio would make any film that had a serial killer in it. I just said, "Okay, so that's the nutshell I need to put it in? It's fine." In the '70s, everybody was making disaster movies. If I'd made The Cell in the '70s, it would have been about a burning building, with a guy having a dream on the 14th floor. I'd make it because of the dream, the studio would make it because of the building burning. Same thing here—I looked at the script, said "Oh, serial-killer thing—I don't give anything about that. Okay. Put that on the side. And inside his head… wow, clean palette." Because it was written, initially, with stuff in his head with zombies coming out, saying, [Adopts zombie voice.] "Have you seen my son?" That kind of stuff. I said, "As long as I can throw all this out…" They said, "No problem." I just said, "Oh yeah, then it's fine." I wanted to do a really hardcore action film inside. But they couldn't understand all the effects I was talking about.

And years go by. Then the day The Matrix came out, I was told, "Yeah, your movie's green-lit now, because we can finally understand all the effects that you've been talking about for three years now." And I said, "I don't want to do it now." They thought I was kidding, but I just left. So they said, "Okay, what do you want to do?" I said, "Anybody with 10 bucks now is doing those effects. I don't want to do action. If you're still on, let's do opera." And they said, "You can't do opera! American audiences hate theater. The last time somebody said that, they made Dracula"—a movie that I adore—"and it's the only film in America that opened above $30 million and didn't make $100 million."

But I said, "Dracula has a literary structure. The structure you've given me is so popcorn, you'll get those guys in and we'll introduce opera. It'll be a Trojan horse. I won't change the structure of the serial-killer stuff, you can have that." I knew the kind of costume and theater I was interested in, most people would just laugh at it, but I said, "That's not a problem. What I need to do in the first act is introduce something that ups the ante so much that in the third act, if he shows up in a tutu and a sari, they won't laugh at him."

Then I came up with all this shit which was called overindulgent, masturbating on dead bodies or whatever. I just said, "All I'm saying with this is, don't laugh at this character, okay?" [Laughs.] And that's it. That's what it took. Because people in Dracula laugh at the wrong bits, and the studio was worried. And I said "No, no, I can fix that." In different countries, the appetite for The Cell was different. In Germany, they wanted a lot more of [the graphic, grotesque material]. Here, they wanted a lot less. I just said "Don't take it all out, or people will laugh in the third act."

When it came out, the studio thought it was the worst kind of pop thing. The guy who sent me the first copy said, "It reminds me of another film we did," and he sent me a copy of A Nightmare On Elm Street 4. And I just went, "Oh, really? That's what they think of it? Okay." And they decided nothing was going to happen with it, so they screened the film to critics, to test audiences, unfinished, without a score or anything. I finished it four days before taking it to festivals, and Roger Ebert saw it and wrote "Did everybody see the same movie?" [Ebert gave it a four-star review, while acknowledging with surprise and confusion all the negative pre-release buzz. —ed.] I wanted to tell him, "Actually, no! 'Cause the studio so wanted to bury it, they sent out the rough cut a week before the movie was supposed to come out!" But, anyway, I knew it was going to be polarizing. Still, it was the biggest hit of the studio for the year.

I was actually wondering if working with the notoriously diva-like J-Lo is what convinced you stay away from working with celebrity names…

I have actually seen J-Lo recently and she has calmed down a lot now but, no, that is not the reason for not having big stars in The Fall (laughs). I wanted to cast a leading man that people did not know in this. I thought that big stars would draw the audience out of the plot. And the young child actor had to be a new discovery. She took a long time to find and the role was not gender specific – it could have been a boy or a girl.

Jennifer Lopez is the queen of romantic comedies and Vince Vaughn is the king of college-aimed comedies. So when I rented The Cell, I immediately wondered why these two royalties are in a movie together. And why is the movie a thriller with tinges of horror? And why is the movie actually… good?

You never know where life will take you, and The Cell, out of all movies, was the turning point in these two actors' careers. I like Lopez and Vaughn, and seeing them act together in The Cell is a funny sight to behold, in a nostalgic way. When the film was released in August of 2000, Jennifer Lopez was still a respectable actress, coming hot off of the critically raved George Clooney-starrer Out of Sight, audience-adored Anaconda, and accolade-accumulating Selena. Vince Vaughn was forging a career for himself by making serious dramas, although they were seldom seen.

With that in mind, casting them in a movie together at the time made sense, and it proved to be the recipe for box office success.

Released August 18, 2000, the same frame as current R-rated horror/thriller-remakes Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night, The Cell unexpectedly topped the box office. Budgeted at $33 million, The Cell imprisoned $17.5 million ($25.5 million adjusted), experiencing longevity, topping out at $61.3 million ($89.4 million today). Critics took a love it or hate it approach. Some loved the eye-candy, while other hated the shallowness of the plot and characters. More leaned to the jeers, as it averages 42% on Rotten Tomatoes.com. The gamut runs from Roger Ebert giving it a perfect four stars, to the Los Angeles Times giving it zero. I fall somewhere in the middle.

Lopez’s next film was The Wedding Planner and she has never come out of the romantic comedy territory since. When her second album dropped, her singing career turned from a vanity project to a legitimate second career. Jennifer Lopez turned from just being an actress into a full-fledged J.Lo empire. Vince Vaughn made a few more flop dramas, but then starred successfully in Old School less than three years later and hasn’t returned to darker fare since.

The Cell had me yearn for the two actors to return to darker material like this again. While I admitted my J.Lo crush in my Anaconda review, I will say again that I don’t think it would hurt for her to take a stab at more difficult roles. After all, Anaconda and The Cell are her second and third highest-grossing films, respectively. Lopez does a fine job here with the material she has been given and is quite convincing as a psychologist, nailing down the comforting, yet stern tone perfectly. However, in the mess of a third act when she literally turns into a Xena: Warrior Princess knock-off in a fight sequence that looks like it belongs in Sucker Punch, she is more laughable than convincing (advice to Jennifer Lopez: while I suggest that you try different roles, please don’t take any parts that involve swordplay).

The Cell had me yearn for the two actors to return to darker material like this again. While I admitted my J.Lo crush in my Anaconda review, I will say again that I don’t think it would hurt for her to take a stab at more difficult roles. After all, Anaconda and The Cell are her second and third highest-grossing films, respectively. Lopez does a fine job here with the material she has been given and is quite convincing as a psychologist, nailing down the comforting, yet stern tone perfectly.