The Cell
Director Tarsem Singh’s The Cell luxuriated in the unnerving intersection between brilliance and absurdity with a twisted tale of a psychologist’s journey into the mind of a deranged killer. Psychologist Catherine Deane’s (Jennifer Lopez) expertise in the minds of children makes her an invaluable asset as she’s pulled into the police’s investigation of Carl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D’Onofrio), a serial killer who takes his victims’ lives by drowning them in glass boxes.
The harsh, coldness of The Cell’s “real” world contrasts with the suffocating heat and nightmarish darkness that defines the dream world within Stargher’s mind that Deane finds herself in as she searches for the location of the murderer’s latest soon-to-be victim. Each of costume designer Eiko Ishioka’s ensembles featured throughout the film creates a gravity well of focus that makes it hard to look away as The Cell alternates between visions of absolute beauty and the macabre.
