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'''''The Cell''''' is a 2000 psychological-thriller/horror with some sci-fi elements directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring JenniferLopez, * [[Creator/VincentDOnofrio Vincent D'Onofrio]] and Vince Vaughn. It is Tarsem's feature-length film debut; he formerly was a director of music videos, such as Music/{{REM}}'s ''Losing My Religion''. Said background certainly shows in the movie...
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'''''The Cell''''' is a 2000 psychological-thriller/horror with some sci-fi elements directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring JenniferLopez, * Music/JenniferLopez, [[Creator/VincentDOnofrio Vincent D'Onofrio]] and Vince Vaughn. It is Tarsem's feature-length film debut; he formerly was a director of music videos, such as Music/{{REM}}'s ''Losing My Religion''. Said background certainly shows in the movie...
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''The Cell'' is a 2000 psychological-thriller/horror with some sci-fi elements directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring JenniferLopez, * [[Creator/VincentDOnofrio Vincent D'Onofrio]] and Vince Vaughn. It is Tarsem's feature-length film debut; he formerly was a director of music videos, such as Music/{{REM}}'s ''Losing My Religion''. Said background certainly shows in the movie...
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'''''The Cell''''' is a 2000 psychological-thriller/horror with some sci-fi elements directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring JenniferLopez, * [[Creator/VincentDOnofrio Vincent D'Onofrio]] and Vince Vaughn. It is Tarsem's feature-length film debut; he formerly was a director of music videos, such as Music/{{REM}}'s ''Losing My Religion''. Said background certainly shows in the movie...
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** Catherine is shown watching ''FantasticPlanet'' before going to bed.
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** Catherine is shown watching ''FantasticPlanet'' ''Animation/FantasticPlanet'' before going to bed.
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'''''The Cell''''' is a 2000 psychological-thriller/horror with some sci-fi elements directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring JenniferLopez, Vincent D'Onofrio and Vince Vaughn. It is Tarsem's feature-length film debut; he formerly was a director of music videos, such as Music/{{REM}}'s ''Losing My Religion''. Said background certainly shows in the movie...
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'''''The Cell''''' is a 2000 psychological-thriller/horror with some sci-fi elements directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring JenniferLopez, * [[Creator/VincentDOnofrio Vincent D'Onofrio D'Onofrio]] and Vince Vaughn. It is Tarsem's feature-length film debut; he formerly was a director of music videos, such as Music/{{REM}}'s ''Losing My Religion''. Said background certainly shows in the movie...
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* ArtisticLicenseLaw: As WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic points out, Carl is still in police custody when Catherine gives him a MercyKill, yet the FBI let her go without a hitch.
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Needs a real cover image
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[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_cell1_7945.jpg]]
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* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: [[spoiler:The demon in the serial killer's mind]] by Catherine.
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Dead Little Sister has been renamed and the description clarified. Please check the page to make sure that the example fits before readding if appropriate.
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* [[DeadLittleSister Dead Little Brother]]: It is revealed that Catherine has one, which is why she started work helping people in a coma.
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* DeadLittleBrother /[[DeadLittleSister]]: It is reveaaled that Catherine has one, which is why she started work helping people in a coma.
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* DeadLittleBrother /[[DeadLittleSister]]: [[DeadLittleSister Dead Little Brother]]: It is reveaaled revealed that Catherine has one, which is why she started work helping people in a coma.
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* DeadLittleBrother /[[DeadLittleSister]]: It is reveaaled that Catherine has one, which is why she started work helping people in a coma.
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* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic
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* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs?
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* SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: The glass-enclosed "cell' in located in an underground chamber in the middle of nowhere.
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* SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: The glass-enclosed "cell' in is located in an underground chamber in the middle of nowhere.
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* SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: The glass-enclosed "cell' in located in an underground chamber in the middle of nowhere.
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* DrowningPit: The modus operandi of the killer.
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* Novak being shackled down, having a hole cut in his chest and having his intestines pulled out and spiraled around a rotisserie whilst a vulture caws nearby.
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* Novak being shackled down, having a hole cut in his chest stomach and having his intestines pulled out and spiraled around a rotisserie whilst a vulture caws nearby.
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* TortureCellar: Where Carl keeps his victims.
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[[quoteright:319:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_cell.jpg]]
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* A room resembling a Roman temple with an albino peacock, where Catherine appears dressed as the Virgin Mary and offers consul to the little boy Carl, and then the room turning dark and worms and a tarantula appearing on young Carl as the evil Carl emerges from a pool of water, and Catherine turning into a warrior princess to battle him, and then back into the Madonna to baptize (thereby killing) the young Carl.
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* A room resembling a Roman temple with an albino peacock, where Catherine appears dressed as the Virgin Mary and offers consul to the little boy Carl, and then the room turning dark and worms and a tarantula appearing on young Carl as the evil Carl emerges from a pool of water, and Catherine turning into a warrior princess to battle him, and then back into the Madonna and using a baptism pool to baptize (thereby killing) MercyKill the young Carl.
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Critical reception.
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None of this is given a great deal of exposition regarding what it all means. [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic Some critics have espoused that none of it honestly means anything and is in the movie solely to look pretty]] (which it does).
Critical reception to the film has been mixed. Whilst the visuals (e.g., sets, props, costumes, special effects) in it are praised almost universally, the plot, script, acting and the like are usually regarded as mediocre at best. Some critics have attacked it for its strong misogynistic imagery. And a small brouhaha arose over the fact that at the start of the film, Catherine, a child psychiatrist, smokes a marijuana joint. Many felt it was a rip-off of ''{{Se7en}}'' and ''SilenceOfTheLambs'', with a dash of ''TheMatrix''. RogerEbert liked it, in any case.
Critical reception to the film has been mixed. Whilst the visuals (e.g., sets, props, costumes, special effects) in it are praised almost universally, the plot, script, acting and the like are usually regarded as mediocre at best. Some critics have attacked it for its strong misogynistic imagery. And a small brouhaha arose over the fact that at the start of the film, Catherine, a child psychiatrist, smokes a marijuana joint. Many felt it was a rip-off of ''{{Se7en}}'' and ''SilenceOfTheLambs'', with a dash of ''TheMatrix''. RogerEbert liked it, in any case.
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None of this is given a great deal of exposition regarding what it all means. [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic Some critics have espoused that none of it honestly means anything and is in the movie solely to look pretty]] (which it does).
Critical reception to the film has been mixed. Whilst the visuals (e.g., sets, props, costumes, special effects) in it are praised almost universally, the plot, script, acting and the like are usually regarded as mediocre at best. Some critics have attacked it for its strong misogynistic imagery. And a small brouhaha arose over the fact that at the start of the film, Catherine, a child psychiatrist, smokes a marijuana joint. Many felt it was a rip-off of ''{{Se7en}}'' and ''SilenceOfTheLambs'', with a dash of ''TheMatrix''. RogerEbert liked it, in any case.
pretty]].
Critical reception to the film has been mixed. Whilst the visuals (e.g., sets, props, costumes, special effects) in it are praised almost universally, the plot, script, acting and the like are usually regarded as mediocre at best. Some critics have attacked it for its strong misogynistic imagery. And a small brouhaha arose over the fact that at the start of the film, Catherine, a child psychiatrist, smokes a marijuana joint. Many felt it was a rip-off of ''{{Se7en}}'' and ''SilenceOfTheLambs'', with a dash of ''TheMatrix''. RogerEbert liked it, in any case.
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* StealthPun: The little boy lying in coma in the beginning is referred by scientists as "Mister E", because they cannot understand how to heal him.
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All this is interspersed with a bucket-load of seemingly random imagery that alternates between DesignStudentsOrgasm, FetishFuel, {{Gorn}}, HighOctaneNightmareFuel, MindScrew[=/=]TrueArtIsIncomprehensible and {{Squick}} (though usually some combination thereof). This includes but is not limited to:
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All this is interspersed with a bucket-load of seemingly random imagery that alternates between DesignStudentsOrgasm, FetishFuel, {{Gorn}}, HighOctaneNightmareFuel, NightmareFuel, MindScrew[=/=]TrueArtIsIncomprehensible and {{Squick}} (though usually some combination thereof). This includes but is not limited to:
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* CleanCut: That poor, poor horse. Or was it? I mean, it didn't appear to actually die...
** [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel AAHHH!]] [[FateWorseThanDeath That poor, poor horse!]]
** [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel AAHHH!]] [[FateWorseThanDeath That poor, poor horse!]]
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* CleanCut: That poor, poor horse. Or was it? I mean, it It didn't appear to actually die...
** [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel AAHHH!]]die... [[FateWorseThanDeath That poor, poor horse!]]
** [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel AAHHH!]]
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read an interesting bit of trivia on wikipedia, thought i\'d incorporate it here
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* ShoutOut: Many scenes in the movie are homages to various real-life works of art. The aforementioned sliced-up horse scene and the Carl's mother doppelgangers are homages to a sculpture by Damien Hirst and a painting one of Tarsem's friends has in their house, respectively.
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* ShoutOut: Many scenes in the movie are homages to various real-life works of art. The aforementioned sliced-up horse scene and the Carl's mother doppelgangers are homages to a sculpture by Damien Hirst and a painting [[DavidBowie one of Tarsem's friends friends]] has in their house, respectively.
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It\'s obvious that the killer\'s father was a fundamentalist freak.
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* DidNotDoResearch: Unless the killer's father is a pastor or a cultist, the writers really showed how little they knew about baptism.
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-> ''"WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?!"''
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J-Lo plays a child psychiatrist named Catherine Deane who is pioneering a revolutionary technology that allows her to [[MentalWorld enter people's minds by rendering them as virtual environments]] so she can converse with their inner-selves. (This procedure consists, in case you were wondering, of donning a red rubber suit that looks as though it's made of strawberry twizzers, having a cloth made of computer circuitry draped over one's face and being suspended from the ceiling by wires.) She is currently using this technology to try and coax a boy with a unique form of schizophrenia out of a coma.
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J-Lo plays a child psychiatrist named Catherine Deane who is pioneering a revolutionary technology that allows her to [[MentalWorld enter people's minds by rendering them as virtual environments]] so she can converse with their inner-selves. (This inner-selves (this procedure consists, in case you were wondering, of donning a red rubber suit that looks as though it's made of strawberry twizzers, twizzlers, having a cloth made of computer circuitry draped over one's face and being suspended from the ceiling by wires.) wires). She is currently using this technology to try and coax a boy with a unique form of schizophrenia out of a coma.
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* In the opening scene, J-Lo riding across the Nambian desert in a white feathered dress, dismounting, ascending a sand dune a small bit, then looking back on her horse which has turned into a chess piece, then approaching a ruined boat half-buried in the sand next to a dead tree, and briefly talking to a boy who then suddenly turns into a werewolf-like creature.
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* DarkAndTroubledPast: All 3 main characters. It's implied that [[spoiler:Novak had the worst past, which brings to question just how bad Stargher really had it.]]
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* DarkAndTroubledPast: All 3 main characters. It's implied that [[spoiler:Novak had the worst past, which brings to question just how bad Stargher really had it.]]it]].
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* FreudianExcuse: It's a serial killer movie. This trope is pretty much a given. The best part is that [[spoiler:(part of) Carl himself considers it bullshit, and simply wants to die so as not to hurt anyone else. Catherine grants his wish.]]
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* FreudianExcuse: It's a serial killer movie. This trope is pretty much a given. The best part is that [[spoiler:(part of) Carl himself considers it bullshit, and simply wants to die so as not to hurt anyone else. Catherine grants his wish.]]wish]].
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* PietaPlagiarism: [[spoiler:After stabbing Carl's evil side and brutally injuring his inner child, Catherine, dressed as a Madonna figure, [[BridalCarry carries the boy in such a manner]] while she baptizes/mercy kills him.]]
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* PietaPlagiarism: [[spoiler:After stabbing Carl's evil side and brutally injuring his inner child, Catherine, dressed as a Madonna figure, [[BridalCarry carries the boy in such a manner]] while she baptizes/mercy kills him.]]him]].
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-> ''"WHERE YOU COME FROM?!"''
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-> ''"WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?!"''
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* PoliceAreUseless: Not only do the cops wait to storm Carl's home until ''after'' he's suffered the neural glitch that puts him in a coma, but [[spoiler: it takes a series of scifi MentalWorld journeys to call their attention to a manufacturer's logo that was right there on the real-world evidence all along]].
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[[quoteright:319:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_cell.jpg]]
-> ''"WHERE YOU COME FROM?!"''
-->-- '''King Stargher'''
'''''The Cell''''' is a 2000 psychological-thriller/horror with some sci-fi elements directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring JenniferLopez, Vincent D'Onofrio and Vince Vaughn. It is Tarsem's feature-length film debut; he formerly was a director of music videos, such as Music/{{REM}}'s ''Losing My Religion''. Said background certainly shows in the movie...
J-Lo plays a child psychiatrist named Catherine Deane who is pioneering a revolutionary technology that allows her to [[MentalWorld enter people's minds by rendering them as virtual environments]] so she can converse with their inner-selves. (This procedure consists, in case you were wondering, of donning a red rubber suit that looks as though it's made of strawberry twizzers, having a cloth made of computer circuitry draped over one's face and being suspended from the ceiling by wires.) She is currently using this technology to try and coax a boy with a unique form of schizophrenia out of a coma.
Meanwhile, there is a SerialKiller named Carl Stargher (D'Onofrio) on the loose. In order to get his rocks off, Carl abducts young, blonde women and takes them to an abandoned farm (the whereabouts of which is unknown to the other characters). There, he places them in a glass tank wherein over the course of a few hours a shower periodically sprays water on them briefly but then stops, but eventually starts and doesn't stop until the tank is filled and they drown. Carl comes back, takes the bodies out, and then bleaches them so they resemble dolls and puts collars around their necks. He then suspends himself above them via chains attached to piercings in his back and masturbates. Geez... talk about RuleThirtyFour. Carl has just abducted his seventh victim, Julia, and this procedure has begun again. Vaughn plays detective Peter Novak who has been tracking Carl for some time, but just as they finally apprehend him at his house, Carl falls into an irreversible coma on account of his form of schizophrenia... before he could be questioned regarding the whereabouts of the farm where Julia is soon to be drowned.
So Novak and the FBI take Carl to Catherine's clinic, so that she can venture inside his mind and coax his inner-self into telling her where Julia is. Within Carl's mind, Catherine discovers that Carl's neurosis is divided between the innocent and frightened little boy he is at heart and the evil and demon-like king that he is outwardly. She finds herself seeking to defeat the demon and put the child to rest. Eventually she becomes trapped in Carl's mind (turning off the virtual reality machinery would kill her) and Novak goes in after her. There he sets her free, and discovers the clue to where Julia is. While he goes off to rescue her, Catherine brings Carl into her mind so she can slay the demon, but can't kill him without killing Carl entirely.
All this is interspersed with a bucket-load of seemingly random imagery that alternates between DesignStudentsOrgasm, FetishFuel, {{Gorn}}, HighOctaneNightmareFuel, MindScrew[=/=]TrueArtIsIncomprehensible and {{Squick}} (though usually some combination thereof). This includes but is not limited to:
* In the opening scene, J-Lo riding across the Nambian desert in a white feathered dress, dismounting, ascending a sand dune a small bit, then looking back on her horse which has turned into a chess piece, then approaching a ruined boat half-buried in the sand next to a dead tree, and briefly talking to a boy who then suddenly turns into a werewolf-like creature.
* A horse standing in a room, then a wall-clock ticking backwards and upon reaching the end a set of glass panes coming down and severing the horse, sushi-style, into several neat pieces that remain suspending in mid-air within the glass; only with the horse not dying and still being alive with the separated chunks of its lungs still breathing and its ears still twitching.
* A collection of doll-like, corpse-like women inside display cases depicting scenes behind glass panels, attached to crude machinery that jerks them about in a series of grotesque, sadomasochistic, sexual poses whilst they moan and groan in pleasure/pain; including one in a dentist's chair, a ballerina, and a giant, rubbery-looking female bodybuilder with no nipples.
* A demon-like version of Carl with two giant purple sheets of cloth attached to the rings in his back and wound around the walls of his throne room.
* Three doppelgangers of Carl's mother frozen, staring up at the sky and then in sequence turning to look at Novak and reciting a message about Carl before turning back to stare at the sky again.
* Novak being shackled down, having a hole cut in his chest and having his intestines pulled out and spiraled around a rotisserie whilst a vulture caws nearby.
* A room resembling a Roman temple with an albino peacock, where Catherine appears dressed as the Virgin Mary and offers consul to the little boy Carl, and then the room turning dark and worms and a tarantula appearing on young Carl as the evil Carl emerges from a pool of water, and Catherine turning into a warrior princess to battle him, and then back into the Madonna to baptize (thereby killing) the young Carl.
None of this is given a great deal of exposition regarding what it all means. [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic Some critics have espoused that none of it honestly means anything and is in the movie solely to look pretty]] (which it does).
Critical reception to the film has been mixed. Whilst the visuals (e.g., sets, props, costumes, special effects) in it are praised almost universally, the plot, script, acting and the like are usually regarded as mediocre at best. Some critics have attacked it for its strong misogynistic imagery. And a small brouhaha arose over the fact that at the start of the film, Catherine, a child psychiatrist, smokes a marijuana joint. Many felt it was a rip-off of ''{{Se7en}}'' and ''SilenceOfTheLambs'', with a dash of ''TheMatrix''. RogerEbert liked it, in any case.
In 2006, Singh would go on to release the better received, but equally visually impressive film, ''Film/TheFall''.
An InNameOnly DirectToDVD sequel was released in 2009.
----
!!This film provides examples of:
* AbusiveParents: Carl was abused by his father, which gives Catherine some sympathy for him. Novak (and some irritated critics) claims that it would take more than a father who hit him to make Carl do the things he did. Note that the split personality is part of the disease, and the same thing is happening to Catherine's other patient.
* BlackBugRoom: Almost the entirety of Carl's mind; though the house where he remembers his father beating him most prominently.
* CleanCut: That poor, poor horse. Or was it? I mean, it didn't appear to actually die...
** [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel AAHHH!]] [[FateWorseThanDeath That poor, poor horse!]]
* CostumePorn
* DarkAndTroubledPast: All 3 main characters. It's implied that [[spoiler:Novak had the worst past, which brings to question just how bad Stargher really had it.]]
* DidNotDoResearch: Unless the killer's father is a pastor or a cultist, the writers really showed how little they knew about baptism.
* EnemyWithin: The demon king side of Carl's personality.
* FanService: See MaleGaze, below.
* FemmeFatale: When Carl has corrupted Catherine, she becomes dressed in a black lace nightgown with a red collar, thereby evoking a black widow spider (see FetishFuel, below); when Novak enters Carl's mind, she distracts him with a kiss whilst Carl incapacitates him.
* FluffyFashionFeathers: The white dress.
* FreudianExcuse: It's a serial killer movie. This trope is pretty much a given. The best part is that [[spoiler:(part of) Carl himself considers it bullshit, and simply wants to die so as not to hurt anyone else. Catherine grants his wish.]]
* GirlInABox: Imagery of this calibre is used extensively throughout the movie.
* JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind: Obviously.
* LivingDollCollector: ''[[{{Squick}} Ohhhhhhhhhhhh boooooooy...]]''
* MaleGaze: Near the start of the film there is a scene where Catherine is in a short dressing gown and goes to look in the fridge; here there is a gratuitous, pointless close-up shot of J-Lo's arse. This is not a plot point... it literally serves no other purpose in the movie other than to be a gratuitous, pointless close-up shot of J-Lo's arse.
* MentalWorld: Also obviously.
* MercyKill: Carl tells Catherine that he once drowned an injured bird so that his father wouldn't find and kill it. Catherine does what symbolically amounts to the same thing to him in the end.
* MindScrew
* PietaPlagiarism: [[spoiler:After stabbing Carl's evil side and brutally injuring his inner child, Catherine, dressed as a Madonna figure, [[BridalCarry carries the boy in such a manner]] while she baptizes/mercy kills him.]]
* PimpedOutDress: J-Lo gets two: the white, feathered wedding-style one in Edward's mind, and the red one in Carl's mind.
* RubeGoldbergHatesYourGuts
* SceneryPorn/[[SceneryGorn Gorn]]: All of the scenes inside people's minds are exceptionally designed, but are often quite hostile or frightening.
* TheSchizophreniaConspiracy: Averted; the schizophrenia shown in the movie resembles an exaggerated form of catatonic schizophrenia. Even the ideas of it being caused by viruses and presenting through abnormalities have a basis in reality. Wilson's infraction is completely made up, though, as is the idea of schizophrenia presenting with intense migraines.
* SerialKiller
* ShirtlessScene: Vincent/Carl gets a bunch.
* ShoutOut: Many scenes in the movie are homages to various real-life works of art. The aforementioned sliced-up horse scene and the Carl's mother doppelgangers are homages to a sculpture by Damien Hirst and a painting one of Tarsem's friends has in their house, respectively.
** Carl's victims are also found on a riverbed, [[TwinPeaks dead, wrapped in plastic]]. And before Carl is captured, he sings "Marsie Dotes", which Leland sang in the second season.
** At one point, Catherine gets trapped in a closet and is forced to watch Carl get abused by his father. It's shot to look almost exactly like a similar scene in BlueVelvet.
** Catherine is shown watching ''FantasticPlanet'' before going to bed.
** The scene of the three identical women frozen in what looks like a scream is a shout out to the painting [[http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b334/susancloud/dawn.jpg?t=1244085062 Dawn]] by Odd Nerdrum.
* SlaveCollar: A pervasive motif.
* StrawmanPolitical: Notably averted. The film seems to disagree with Novak's views on the FreudianExcuse, but still treats his view (and any audience members who share said view) with respect.
* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs?
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic
* WomanInWhite: J-Lo in the opening scene.
* YouHave48Hours: The detectives had 40 hours before Julia drowned.
----
-> ''"WHERE YOU COME FROM?!"''
-->-- '''King Stargher'''
'''''The Cell''''' is a 2000 psychological-thriller/horror with some sci-fi elements directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring JenniferLopez, Vincent D'Onofrio and Vince Vaughn. It is Tarsem's feature-length film debut; he formerly was a director of music videos, such as Music/{{REM}}'s ''Losing My Religion''. Said background certainly shows in the movie...
J-Lo plays a child psychiatrist named Catherine Deane who is pioneering a revolutionary technology that allows her to [[MentalWorld enter people's minds by rendering them as virtual environments]] so she can converse with their inner-selves. (This procedure consists, in case you were wondering, of donning a red rubber suit that looks as though it's made of strawberry twizzers, having a cloth made of computer circuitry draped over one's face and being suspended from the ceiling by wires.) She is currently using this technology to try and coax a boy with a unique form of schizophrenia out of a coma.
Meanwhile, there is a SerialKiller named Carl Stargher (D'Onofrio) on the loose. In order to get his rocks off, Carl abducts young, blonde women and takes them to an abandoned farm (the whereabouts of which is unknown to the other characters). There, he places them in a glass tank wherein over the course of a few hours a shower periodically sprays water on them briefly but then stops, but eventually starts and doesn't stop until the tank is filled and they drown. Carl comes back, takes the bodies out, and then bleaches them so they resemble dolls and puts collars around their necks. He then suspends himself above them via chains attached to piercings in his back and masturbates. Geez... talk about RuleThirtyFour. Carl has just abducted his seventh victim, Julia, and this procedure has begun again. Vaughn plays detective Peter Novak who has been tracking Carl for some time, but just as they finally apprehend him at his house, Carl falls into an irreversible coma on account of his form of schizophrenia... before he could be questioned regarding the whereabouts of the farm where Julia is soon to be drowned.
So Novak and the FBI take Carl to Catherine's clinic, so that she can venture inside his mind and coax his inner-self into telling her where Julia is. Within Carl's mind, Catherine discovers that Carl's neurosis is divided between the innocent and frightened little boy he is at heart and the evil and demon-like king that he is outwardly. She finds herself seeking to defeat the demon and put the child to rest. Eventually she becomes trapped in Carl's mind (turning off the virtual reality machinery would kill her) and Novak goes in after her. There he sets her free, and discovers the clue to where Julia is. While he goes off to rescue her, Catherine brings Carl into her mind so she can slay the demon, but can't kill him without killing Carl entirely.
All this is interspersed with a bucket-load of seemingly random imagery that alternates between DesignStudentsOrgasm, FetishFuel, {{Gorn}}, HighOctaneNightmareFuel, MindScrew[=/=]TrueArtIsIncomprehensible and {{Squick}} (though usually some combination thereof). This includes but is not limited to:
* In the opening scene, J-Lo riding across the Nambian desert in a white feathered dress, dismounting, ascending a sand dune a small bit, then looking back on her horse which has turned into a chess piece, then approaching a ruined boat half-buried in the sand next to a dead tree, and briefly talking to a boy who then suddenly turns into a werewolf-like creature.
* A horse standing in a room, then a wall-clock ticking backwards and upon reaching the end a set of glass panes coming down and severing the horse, sushi-style, into several neat pieces that remain suspending in mid-air within the glass; only with the horse not dying and still being alive with the separated chunks of its lungs still breathing and its ears still twitching.
* A collection of doll-like, corpse-like women inside display cases depicting scenes behind glass panels, attached to crude machinery that jerks them about in a series of grotesque, sadomasochistic, sexual poses whilst they moan and groan in pleasure/pain; including one in a dentist's chair, a ballerina, and a giant, rubbery-looking female bodybuilder with no nipples.
* A demon-like version of Carl with two giant purple sheets of cloth attached to the rings in his back and wound around the walls of his throne room.
* Three doppelgangers of Carl's mother frozen, staring up at the sky and then in sequence turning to look at Novak and reciting a message about Carl before turning back to stare at the sky again.
* Novak being shackled down, having a hole cut in his chest and having his intestines pulled out and spiraled around a rotisserie whilst a vulture caws nearby.
* A room resembling a Roman temple with an albino peacock, where Catherine appears dressed as the Virgin Mary and offers consul to the little boy Carl, and then the room turning dark and worms and a tarantula appearing on young Carl as the evil Carl emerges from a pool of water, and Catherine turning into a warrior princess to battle him, and then back into the Madonna to baptize (thereby killing) the young Carl.
None of this is given a great deal of exposition regarding what it all means. [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic Some critics have espoused that none of it honestly means anything and is in the movie solely to look pretty]] (which it does).
Critical reception to the film has been mixed. Whilst the visuals (e.g., sets, props, costumes, special effects) in it are praised almost universally, the plot, script, acting and the like are usually regarded as mediocre at best. Some critics have attacked it for its strong misogynistic imagery. And a small brouhaha arose over the fact that at the start of the film, Catherine, a child psychiatrist, smokes a marijuana joint. Many felt it was a rip-off of ''{{Se7en}}'' and ''SilenceOfTheLambs'', with a dash of ''TheMatrix''. RogerEbert liked it, in any case.
In 2006, Singh would go on to release the better received, but equally visually impressive film, ''Film/TheFall''.
An InNameOnly DirectToDVD sequel was released in 2009.
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!!This film provides examples of:
* AbusiveParents: Carl was abused by his father, which gives Catherine some sympathy for him. Novak (and some irritated critics) claims that it would take more than a father who hit him to make Carl do the things he did. Note that the split personality is part of the disease, and the same thing is happening to Catherine's other patient.
* BlackBugRoom: Almost the entirety of Carl's mind; though the house where he remembers his father beating him most prominently.
* CleanCut: That poor, poor horse. Or was it? I mean, it didn't appear to actually die...
** [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel AAHHH!]] [[FateWorseThanDeath That poor, poor horse!]]
* CostumePorn
* DarkAndTroubledPast: All 3 main characters. It's implied that [[spoiler:Novak had the worst past, which brings to question just how bad Stargher really had it.]]
* DidNotDoResearch: Unless the killer's father is a pastor or a cultist, the writers really showed how little they knew about baptism.
* EnemyWithin: The demon king side of Carl's personality.
* FanService: See MaleGaze, below.
* FemmeFatale: When Carl has corrupted Catherine, she becomes dressed in a black lace nightgown with a red collar, thereby evoking a black widow spider (see FetishFuel, below); when Novak enters Carl's mind, she distracts him with a kiss whilst Carl incapacitates him.
* FluffyFashionFeathers: The white dress.
* FreudianExcuse: It's a serial killer movie. This trope is pretty much a given. The best part is that [[spoiler:(part of) Carl himself considers it bullshit, and simply wants to die so as not to hurt anyone else. Catherine grants his wish.]]
* GirlInABox: Imagery of this calibre is used extensively throughout the movie.
* JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind: Obviously.
* LivingDollCollector: ''[[{{Squick}} Ohhhhhhhhhhhh boooooooy...]]''
* MaleGaze: Near the start of the film there is a scene where Catherine is in a short dressing gown and goes to look in the fridge; here there is a gratuitous, pointless close-up shot of J-Lo's arse. This is not a plot point... it literally serves no other purpose in the movie other than to be a gratuitous, pointless close-up shot of J-Lo's arse.
* MentalWorld: Also obviously.
* MercyKill: Carl tells Catherine that he once drowned an injured bird so that his father wouldn't find and kill it. Catherine does what symbolically amounts to the same thing to him in the end.
* MindScrew
* PietaPlagiarism: [[spoiler:After stabbing Carl's evil side and brutally injuring his inner child, Catherine, dressed as a Madonna figure, [[BridalCarry carries the boy in such a manner]] while she baptizes/mercy kills him.]]
* PimpedOutDress: J-Lo gets two: the white, feathered wedding-style one in Edward's mind, and the red one in Carl's mind.
* RubeGoldbergHatesYourGuts
* SceneryPorn/[[SceneryGorn Gorn]]: All of the scenes inside people's minds are exceptionally designed, but are often quite hostile or frightening.
* TheSchizophreniaConspiracy: Averted; the schizophrenia shown in the movie resembles an exaggerated form of catatonic schizophrenia. Even the ideas of it being caused by viruses and presenting through abnormalities have a basis in reality. Wilson's infraction is completely made up, though, as is the idea of schizophrenia presenting with intense migraines.
* SerialKiller
* ShirtlessScene: Vincent/Carl gets a bunch.
* ShoutOut: Many scenes in the movie are homages to various real-life works of art. The aforementioned sliced-up horse scene and the Carl's mother doppelgangers are homages to a sculpture by Damien Hirst and a painting one of Tarsem's friends has in their house, respectively.
** Carl's victims are also found on a riverbed, [[TwinPeaks dead, wrapped in plastic]]. And before Carl is captured, he sings "Marsie Dotes", which Leland sang in the second season.
** At one point, Catherine gets trapped in a closet and is forced to watch Carl get abused by his father. It's shot to look almost exactly like a similar scene in BlueVelvet.
** Catherine is shown watching ''FantasticPlanet'' before going to bed.
** The scene of the three identical women frozen in what looks like a scream is a shout out to the painting [[http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b334/susancloud/dawn.jpg?t=1244085062 Dawn]] by Odd Nerdrum.
* SlaveCollar: A pervasive motif.
* StrawmanPolitical: Notably averted. The film seems to disagree with Novak's views on the FreudianExcuse, but still treats his view (and any audience members who share said view) with respect.
* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs?
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic
* WomanInWhite: J-Lo in the opening scene.
* YouHave48Hours: The detectives had 40 hours before Julia drowned.
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