I'm one of the lucky ones. I'd heard enough about The Cell before I saw it to know that I'd better keep my eyes shut during certain scenes. People who have far stronger stomachs than I told me they would never be able to get the images out of their minds. I'm still haunted by the car scene in Pulp Fiction, which tells you how vulnerable I am to graphic violence. And under no circumstances will I watch a rape scene. Which pretty much means I shouldn't have been seeing The Cell in the first place. But that's besides the point.

Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) is a serial killer who suffers from a form of schizophrenia caused by a virus he contracted in the womb - the only possible motivation we're given for his hatred of women. His modus operandi is to kidnap young women, put them in an airtight "cell" several meters below ground, out in the middle of the country, hold them there for forty hours (while monitoring their increasing panic by video), then slowly, sporadically, fill up the cell with water, until the woman drowns. But it doesn't end there. Then the necrophilia begins. I'll leave it at that in case there are some of you who actually still want to see this movie.

Shortly after imprisoning his latest victim (Catherine Sutherland), Stargher suffers a seizure specific to his schizophrenia and is rendered comatose, never to re-awaken. He's gone. Kaput. Poof. Buh-bye. The police realize they have just under two days to track down the victim, but only Stargher knows where she is, and he ain't talking.

Enter psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez). Through a new combination of psychotropic (some would say psychadelic) drugs and kinetic technology, she is able to enter Stagher's unconscious mind. The kicker is that she can't just go in and see where the girl is being held; she must win his trust and convince him to tell her. Of course, complications ensue, yadda yadda yadda.

Forget that the story, such as it is, is cardboard, clichéd and full of symbolism that doesn't actually mean anything. Forget that the script gives the actors almost nothing to work with (and they actually do a pretty good job, considering). There's a fine line between making a movie about a misogynist and making a misogynist movie; at the very least, The Cell blurs those lines. At worst, it goes about a mile beyond. It's not just the shots of Lopez' butt - aesthetically, I can appreciate a well-toned posterior (and the girl is in shape!). It's director Singh's fascination with the killer's obsession; it's the totally gratuitous scenes of necrophilia, disembowelment, mutilation and torture; it's that Singh wants us to view this grotesqueness as sexy, wrapped up in slick tableaux of exceptional art direction and costume design.

One gets the impression that the film is as much the writer's and director's S/M fantasy as Stagher's. We've seen enough Joe Ezterhaus movies to know that this ploy can sometimes work, though it pretty much always comes off as offensive, but writer Mark Protosevich doesn't have Ezterhaus' skill. Even when Lopez gets her eventual revenge, it seems more like Singh's extreme (very extreme) S/M fantasy than actual retaliation.

For a film that focuses on the psychological, The Cell is extremely one-dimensional. The only backstory given focuses on Stagher, and even that is trite and predictable (he was abused, etc. etc.). Lopez may have understood what motivated her character to embark on this horrid journey, but I haven't got a clue. And speaking of journeys, she isn't even given an arc. Sure, she gets her revenge in the end, but we don't understand where she suddenly gets this surge of sadism. Ultimately, her character winds up traumatized, but not changed. At least poor FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) gets involved because his job dictates it, not because flimsy script does.

Silence of the Lambs, which The Cell rips off in every conceivable way (when it isn't ripping off a dozen other films), worked because the strength of the female protagonist balanced out the psychotic killer. In this film, Lopez' character is only half of Jodie Foster's Clarice. Maybe that's part of the whole Jungian symbolism thing that the film strives for and never reaches: Vaughn's FBI agent is the animus to Lopez' anima; he embodies the masculine and she the feminine. Maybe if they learned to use each other's strengths to solve the mystery, the film would've worked. But they didn't, and it doesn't.

Then again, Silence of the Lambs had a great script, a great director and better actors. Not that this cast is poor - to an actor, their talents are far superior to the script they were given to work with. But only Dylan Baker, who has a bout five lines, is on a par with Foster and Anthony Hopkins.

Where this film succeeds, and brilliantly, is in the visuals. It's a great concept, albeit hardly original. Technically, the execution is excellent - there should be Oscar nominations aplenty for all the design and effects teams. The problem is, not all the visuals further the story; and The Cell becomes more about appearance than content. Which might be fine for a music video, but it doesn't work for a feature film. I'd like to see what could be done with something this visually brilliant that actually had a really good storyline.

Somewhere, there's a really interesting film that explores Jungian concepts like the collective unconscious and lucid dreaming. The Cell isn't it.

eDrive Rating: 2 out of 5

-- Sarah Chauncey