Cell film review: Dull dialogue kills this film that’s co-written by Stephen King about smartphone zombies
Cell hopes to do for smart phones what Jaws did for beaches, but it’s unlikely anyone will be wary of their devices after seeing this messy adaptation of the Stephen King novel.
John Cusack competes with Samuel L Jackson for the most bored looking star, playing two men desperate to survive a zombie holocaust instigated by a cell phone frequency.
The dialogue is so dull that probably the biggest shock of the film comes during the credits, when you learn King himself co-wrote the script.
Much of the source material is either truncated or abandoned, to the extent that it’s hard to follow what’s going on, and even harder to stay interested.
Cheap production values underline the suspicion that this started out as an earnest attempt to adapt the book, and devolved into a mediocre zombie film in a world overrun with mediocre zombie films.