Jennifer Lopez’s Forgotten, Extremely R-Rated Sci-Fi Horror Will Scramble Your Brain Into Confetti

By Robert Scucci
| Published 10 seconds ago

Confession time: I’ve only seen two films starring Jennifer Lopez. I’ve seen 2003’s Gigli, because why wouldn’t I? And one of my girlfriends made me watch The Wedding Planner, which is why I ended up marrying an entirely different person years later. I don’t have any real reason to not follow Jennifer Lopez’s career other than the fact that she’s really just not on my radar, and she doesn’t typically star in the kinds of movies I seek out. I know she’s good in rom-coms, and she’s been praised for her more dramatic roles, but that’s not the frame of reference I was working with when I recently fired up 2000’s The Cell, which is a total nightmare-fueled fever dream that’s more reminiscent of films like Altered States or Beyond the Black Rainbow than anything else.

The Cell is absolutely insane, and I’m saying this with love. At its core, it’s telling a simple enough story once its fiction is established, but it’s the photography, cinematography, score, makeup, and set pieces that truly push this thing to the next level. What starts out as a straightforward investigation quickly turns into a full-blown, kaleidoscopic descent into madness as seen through the subconscious of a schizophrenic serial killer.

Inception Meets Altered States

When we’re first introduced to Jennifer Lopez’s Dr. Catherine Deane, she’s seen working alongside doctors Henry West (Dylan Baker) and Miriam Kent (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) on a new technology known as the Neurological Cartography and Synaptic Transfer System. The technology allows her to enter a comatose patient’s mind and talk to them, with the end goal being to convince them to wake up. Her current patient, Edward Baines (Colton James), whose parents are funding the research, has a rare form of schizophrenia, and it’s her job to reach him and bring him back to reality.

We’re then introduced to Carl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D’Onofrio), a serial killer who has the same rare form of schizophrenia that Edward has, fueling his constantly escalating killing spree and making him a danger to society. No sooner is he caught by the FBI than he falls into a coma as well, which introduces us to two very important key players: Carl’s latest, yet-to-be-found victim, Julia Hickson (Tara Subkoff), and FBI Agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn), who’s been trying to put Carl behind bars for as long as he can remember.

Knowing that he’s racing the clock due to Carl’s MO of throwing his victims into a cell that slowly fills with water, Peter seeks Catherine’s help and convinces her to use the Neurological Cartography and Synaptic Transfer System to infiltrate the killer’s mind, allowing him to find where a hopefully still-alive Julia is being held captive. Things don’t go as planned, however, as Catherine enters Carl’s mind only to bear witness to the ongoing nightmare that awaits her inside it.

When the data suggests that Carl is overpowering Catherine, Peter enters the killer’s mind, not only to gather the intel he needs to save Julia from a slow, agonizing death, but also to give Catherine the mental fortitude to overcome Carl’s influence over her psyche before he fully takes over and destroys her physical body too.

A Total Trip From Start To Finish

What happens inside Carl Rudolph Stargher’s mind while he’s comatose and Catherine and Peter are running through it is something you need to see to believe. My first thought was how much the visuals during the trippier sequences were strikingly reminiscent of Ken Russell’s Altered States. The idealized final form Carl has trapped inside his subconscious (King Stargher) wastes no time letting the viewer know just how troubled the man is, but not in a way that excuses all of the horrible things he did while still fully conscious and somewhat in control of his faculties.

As Catherine peels back layer after layer of his psyche, the whole world they’re living in consumes your entire being as if you’re experiencing these insane moments yourself. It’s the same kind of immersion I felt when I finally sat down and watched Beyond the Black Rainbow. Each sequence melts into the next, and just when you think you’ve had enough, we get sent back to the lab, where doctors West and Kent are toiling away to make sure nobody actually dies in the real world.

While a total mind-melter, The Cell was met with middling reviews, currently boasting a 46 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes against a slightly more favorable 57 percent approval rating on the Popcornmeter. It’s worth noting that Roger Ebert not only gave the film four out of four stars, but also placed it on his “Best 10 Movies of 2000” list.

That’s all to say that The Cell may not be the kind of movie you seek out for a casual viewing. You save movies like this for one of those days when you feel like getting a little weird and need something a little edgier than your typical serial killer procedural. I can’t think of anything more perfect than spending a couple of hours inside one man’s sick mind while his next victim is all alone, wondering if she’ll be rescued before she drowns.

As of this writing, The Cell can be rented or purchased on demand through YouTube, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and Fandango.