Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarilicious October Movie Series: #1 Cell

 Welcome to the Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarilicious October Movie Series, wherein I attempt to justify this little blog's existence - once so full of television recaps and movie and book reviews.  It's still alive, or at least undead.  It seems apt, therefore, to do horror movies.

We kick things off with Cell, the Stephen King adaptation that reunites Room 1408 stars John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.  I've read the novel and while it certainly isn't SK's best, it's far better than this sad excuse for a movie.  The premise is SPOILER a signal goes out over the world's cellphones which turns people into "phone-crazies" a/k/a "phoners" - pretty much just psychic rage murder zombies who kill every other person they see.  A group of survivors, who survived because they don't have phones and escaped the signal, band together and make their way north out of Boston, looking for safety.  Along the way they meet up with other survivors and immolate some sleeper phoner groups, but the phoners, being psychically connected, exact retribution.

There are a lot of changes from the book, no doubt in large part due to budgetary constraints.  Instead of starting out in easily-recognizable/expensive downtown Boston, the movie opens in a generic airport terminal.  In the book, the hero Clay (Cusack in the movie), doesn't own a cellphone and lives in Maine, where his ex-wife and young son live; in the movie, Clay has a cellphone - which he tries to use - but the battery is dead and he has a Boston apartment.  Tom (SLJ), whom Clay meets out on the street in the book, is a T-driver in the movie and they make their escape via generic subway tunnels, not over the Tobin Bridge.  In the book, the heroes walk at night when the phoners are sleeping; in the movie, they walk during the day with no real trouble from the phoners.  Towards the end, once they get to Maine, they travel in a school bus in the book; in the movie, for some reason they are in an ice cream truck (which enraged me as it is much less defensible than a school bus).

Also: Stacey Keach is completely miscast as the headmaster of the boarding school they hole up in for a bit and the "Boston" accents are predictably shitty.  Verdict: Cell is a terrible movie and borderline incoherent.  John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are, if you will pardon the pun, totally phoning it in on this one.