Movie adaptation of Cell

Recently, I read Cell. More recently, I found and bought a DVD of the movie and watched it.

It isn't very good. I don't recommend you waste your time watching it.

But the reason I bothered to write a blog post about it is the time difference. The book was published in 2006 and I commented about how significant that is the other post. In particular, that cell phones weren't that ubiquitous yet. Also, smart phones weren't a thing yet, so most people were using their phones for talking still.

The movie was released in 2016. So phones were much more ubiquitous. And most of them were smart phones. I thought it was interesting that the movie had to juggle a few facts because of this.

In the book, the protagonists have no phones, which is why they are spared during the event. In the movie, they do have phones. They both have smart phones. One has his battery die and the other is too busy working to be using his phone.

But the movie fails to recognize that if nearly everyone has a phone, then the event would have been much more catastrophic the first day and the rest of the plot would not have been able to unfold at all.

That's not why it's a bad movie. They wouldn't have a movie at all if they had recognized that. No, it's a bad movie because it lacks tension, has no pacing, and is full of tropes. It's boring. You might say… they phoned it in! Groan. You might say that. I wouldn't dare.