Coroner’s Report: The Cell 2 on Blu-ray

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 18, 2009

You probably remember The Cell as that movie that had Jennifer Lopez before she became annoying and Vincent D’Onofrio being slightly creepier than normal.  The Cell 2 wants you to remember this movie, so they show a short little introduction that features J. Lo but then quickly moves away from anything really resembling the first movie.

In The Cell 2 Tessie Santiago stars as Maya, a psychic investigator who left the FBI after she blames herself for a woman that died at the hands of The Cusp, a new serial killer.  The Cusp has the cool and interesting methodology of killing his victims, then resuscitating them, only to repeat the process until they eventually die.  The Cusp goes underground for a year but comes out of semi-retirement to lure Maya back into the fold by kidnapping the niece of a local Sheriff.  Maya must explore the memories of the killer in a race to find him in time.

Kills

Four people bite the big one in the film, though one girl does die like two times.  So maybe that makes it five people?  Or four people five deaths?

Ills

A chest is cut open, but we mostly just see the aftermath and a dead body or two.  There are needles poked into skin, some suffocation, torture by shock paddles, an axe to the back, a stab to the hand and a bullet to the brain.  Not really intersting on the injury front.

Lust

One woman is kind enough to appear in lingerie and then remove her bra, revealing some breasts.  That is all.

Learning

Serial killers are, apparently, always the guy that works within 3 degrees of the investigation and shows up twice before you connect the dots.

Review

I wasn’t a huge fan of the first film, though it did have a pretty crazy visual style and Lopez was smoking hot.  Here, Santiago looks a bit like a poor man’s Eva Longoria, but she’s still pretty hot.  Instead of actually getting inside the killer’s head, she mostly walks through his memories, something that is shown by her walking down an electric blue hallway with moving pictures (memories) on the wall, that she watches.  She never really gets into the head of The Cusp until the very end and once there, nothing cool happens and the movie is over another 10 minutes later.

My first problem would revolve around Maya’s decision to leave the FBI – she blames herself (as do others) for the failure to rescue the girl but in actuality, without her abilities they never would have even come close. So, at best, she failed to make a difference, but didn’t cause the death at all.  Secondly, the killer is kind of goofy.  He’s not threatening and comes off insecure and like a little bitch, not someone to be feared.  Plus, the guy is afraid of the dark, but that really doesn’t come into play much.  Towards the end there is possibly the least interesting chase in history, despite featuring a helicopter.  There are some parts of the film that are cool, but mostly in that “it would be cool if it a college student did it” way.

Blu-ray

The disc comes with one special feature, a behind the scenes tidbit, but is equipped with BD Live on this disc.  The picture is presented in 1080p HD 16×9 and looks fantastic.  The film was probably shot on video and one effect scene looks poor, but overall the picture is beautiful and crisp.  The audio is Dolby TrueHD mixed in 5.1 and it is bombastic.  The leveling was annoying with most of the movie being rather normal but cutting away, often, to loud noises and scenes.  When you’re trying to watch this in the quiet of your own home at 1am, that gets old fast.  But the technical specifications of the disc are spot-on and it looks great.

Mortality

Dead on Arrival.  This movie isn’t worth watching.

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