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| More "Inspired by" than "Based on" |
Directed by Todd Williams
Produced by Richard Saperstein, Michael Benaroya, Brian Witten
Written by Stephen King, Adam Alleca
Starring John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman
Budget: $Anemic
Zombies are played out.
Wow, Dylan, what a brave opinion, especially for someone who inhabits the contrarian circles of the internet where things lose their appeal the minute anyone finds out about them!
But damn, with The Walking Dead slumping towards an 8th season, the bizarre necrophilia love-letter that was Warm Bodies, and countless other media about the not-quite-dead, it's hard not to declare the entire thing a fad at the end of its lifecycle.
But I'm not the first person to say this, and the trend shows little indication of stopping, so here we are.
In addition to a zombie movie, this is also an adaptation of a Stephen King novel of the same title, which has widely been declared his worst work in recent memory. Of course, this was the first Stephen King novel I ever read and I enjoyed it well enough for its unflinching portrayal of an apocalypse, pragmatic characters, and interesting twists on the zombie genre.
And in classic King Adaptation style, the movie evens out the highs and lows of the novel into a puddle of shuffling, moaning "meh."
We start with Clay (referred to hereafter as Cusack, because let's be real) at an airport. The opening credits play for a bit over shots of crowds of people with literally (actually literally, not for emphasis) everybody on his or her cell phone. Cusack runs out of battery (his phone, not him) and he looks for a charger.
If you're playing the Stephen King Drinking Game, we're already at two shots for a main character who's an artist, and an unexplained, evil world-wide phenomenon. By the end of the movie you'll suffer liver damage, but that's par for the course nowadays.
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| Where's my high-budget Toxic Avenger reboot? |
And this is pretty much entirely what you need to know about the story: cell phones make you into a zombie.
Cusack runs around, watches the obligatory early-Apocalypse scene destruction (murder, screaming, a crashing airplane), gets chased into the subway, and meets Samuel L. Jackson, playing middle-aged, white, pudgy, flamboyantly gay Tom McCourt. Oh, wait, no, he's playing Samuel L. Jackson.
Now, there's a part of me that says a movie adaptation should be isolated from its book/theatre/theme park roots, but let's be honest, that's not the way the real world works. It might just be me, but I think some accuracy and faithfulness to the source material is required, otherwise why would you bother except to capitalize on an existing intellectual property - oh.
Anyway, Cusack and Jackson run through a soundstage set to look like burning New York, meet the obligatory young female, and wander into the wilderness. The movie follows the standard zombie movie procession:
1. Disastrous beginning with explosions, blood, and screaming.
2. Flight through ruined city, encounter with zombie horde, escape into the wilderness.
3. Murder, but not really because they're zombies.
5. Learn how the zombies tick. Turns out the mysterious cell phone signal reboots human evolution and now everybody's turning into a psychic hive-mind that broadcasts its own radio signals?
4. Meet the B-Team, watch them die one-by-one.
5. Meet the C-Team, watch one die, watch the rest escape.
6. White Male protagonist goes on by himself, fails, dies and/or becomes a zombie.
THE END. Damn it.
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| "Alright John you're concerned because cell phones are turning everyone into murder-psychos." "..." "Good enough! Cut!" |
That's pretty much the only comment I have on the acting. Jackson is fairly forgettable beyond his standard hard-edged persona, but I didn't catch a single "mother-fucker" throughout, so I consider that a waste. They're really the only two actors with any sort of prior career, but I feel compelled to recognize the early zombie hordes for their particularly restrained portrayal of rage-zombies. At one point early on Cusack is getting chased down a set of airport escalators (the really steep ones that lead to a subway) and you can clearly see the zombies behind him use the hand rails. There was a great spot for some physical craziness where they throw themselves down the stairs, but, you know, that would have taken some stunt work and that's hard. It's easier to just hope no one watching notices and move on.
Now, I couldn't find any sort of budget online for this, and I think that's partially because this movie was in development hell for roughly a decade before it limped onto Video on Demand and a limited release with pretty much no marketing trailer or announcement. The novel was released in 2006 and has had a not-insignificant number of names attached, from Rob Zombie to Eli Roth to the Weinsteins. At one point Cusack was asked about the movie at a convention and he essentially shrugged, saying it wasn't in his hands and no one knew anything about it except the production company.
That's probably for good reason. On one hand I like to think a wider release would have drawn some sort of outcry from King fans, but can anyone really claim surprise at this point? It fails as an adaptation because it takes a moderately okay zombie book, removes most of the twists, and dulls all the edges. Impactful character deaths from the novel are weakened, fun scenes are removed entirely, and major characters are omitted in favor of bland survivors-cum-sacrificial-lambs who are introduced and brutally removed within two consecutive scenes.
These problems occur throughout.
The Analogue
Say one thing for Stephen King novels, say his endings tend to suck. The ur-example is The Mist, a far better movie (probably because Frank Darabont knows what he's doing), and it holds true for this one as well. The novel ends literally mid-scene, and understandably angered quite a few people. The movie has a far more fitting, downer ending which I actually appreciate.
There is a single character early on who drew a laugh from me. He's a young guy in the subway train when Cusack and Jackson decide to run, and when they outline the situation everyone else decides they're going to stay. Not this guy. "Yo, can I come with you? Yo, deuces!" and he flips the sideways peace sign at the rest of the extras behind him. I'm with you, pragmatic college kid...oh, wait, you were simply along so you could die? Shame.
The Digital
Usually I like to mention the direction, or the blocking, or the editing, or the score, but there's nothing to talk about in this one. If you've seen a zombie movie, you've seen this. It follows all the beats, in almost a perfect progression. That list above is by no means exhaustive.
As if these points haven't convinced you that no one involved in the production gave a damn, there's a point where they drag out the "Humans only use X% of our brain, now they're using MOOOOOOORE" bullshit, which at this point is inexcusable. At one point a character compares the human mind to a hard-drive displaying "2% in use, 98% available" which was infuriating.
Why would you have Samuel L. Jackson recite a Bible passage that isn't "The path of the righteous man..."? What a waste.
The Surreal
There's a scene lifted almost bit-for-bit from the book where the main characters come across a university with a flock of zombies sleeping on the soccer field. We learn in this scene that the zombies are evolving with some ability to broadcast radio signals from their mouths (whatever), and the music they chose was Eduard Khil's Trolololo song, which, considering the video's reputation on the internet, is such a baffling decision that I was reduced to mad laughter usually reserved for the end of a John Carpenter film.
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| Y'all just negligent. |
Don't watch Cell. If it's on in the background and you're too lazy to change the channel, that's fine...but if you have a choice between this and pretty much any other zombie media, I'd watch that instead. Even the disastrous, insulting World War Z adaptation.
At least it's better than the Langoliers.
Tomorrow: White-washing? In my ancient fantasy Egypt? It's more likely than you think!
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