Cell 213 (2011)

Wonderful character development!

Simply A Masterpiece

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I mean, there were a lot of implausible things that happened in the movie, but what film these days aren't rife with implausibility's? I didn't think the overall acting was that bad. Sure, there were many images on display that one has seen before in Biblical-type horror movies, but they were well presented here.Truth be told, like a lot of flicks I watch, I don't bother to research in depth what it's all about. All I knew going into "Cell 213" was that it was a horror film. I'd even forgotten about the fact that it was supposed to be some kind of factious exposition between God and the Devil. At least it wasn't preachy. That would've brought the ratings way down. I recommend this flick. Could've better, could've worse. Mileage may vary.

Maninder Chana writes a story about a cocky and somewhat unethical ambitious young lawyer that finds himself thrown into a complete Hell when one of his clients unexpectedly kills himself while on a private meeting only days prior to his release from jail.Stephen T. Kay sits in the Director chair trying to build some tension around the story in a by-the-numbers horror movie.And when the only thing that comes to your mind when you see the Writer & Director of a movie is "who?" then you know things are not stacking on the right side. Sure, sometimes unknown Writers can create wonderful scripts and unknown Directors can make masterpieces...sadly neither of those is the case with this movie.The script is a complete mess, and there's a reason for that: this was Chana's first attempt at a "full" story, since his whole career was built over short stories. And you can see that "limitation" permeating into this movie's script.We have the main character Michael Grey (played by Eric Balfour) as a ruthless young lawyer trying to win cases at all costs whose ambition pushes him to do some really questionable things in order to "secure" a win in Court. And then when everything seems to go "according to plans" suddenly everything goes into "Chaos Mode".And that's when everything goes awry: almost everything in the story is just completely ridiculous without any sort of verisimilitude whatsoever. Plot elements come and go without any sort of actual explanation. Characters are introduced without any idea of "what to do with them", sometimes even introducing totally pointless characters into an already confusing plot. It seems as if the Writer just doesn't know how to tell a detailed tale and just purposely keeps everything vague as a way of not bothering explaining anything.In Kay's case, his best work has been the 2000 flick Get Carter, with Sly Stallone. So...yeah, he's no Martin Scorsese.In the acting department Eric Balfour does a somewhat acceptable job as the lead character, followed by Michael Rooker, in one of his usual roles: a despicable and twisted prison-officer-with-a-moral- standard-of-his-own. Bruce Greenwood does an awful job as South River State Penitentiary's Warden, with a dull and uninspired performance. And Deborah Valente plays Audrey Davis, a Correctional Dept. officer best described as "forgettable".Bottom line: -Confusing, convoluted and sloppy script-Average directing job-Average-to-Mediocre acting-Standard photography-Bad FX-Not scary-Not "profound"-No jump scares-Awful as a Thriller-Awful as a Horror movie-Awful as a Supernatural story-An all-around weak movieIf you're into masochism there's better things to do to achieve your goal. This movie is 109 minutes of pure boredom from start to finish. Stay far away from it.

It started out good, and gave me some clues as in it could be even better. For a while there, it did do so, but then it reached half point.Disaster! You lose interest, the movie becomes fuzzy, unclear, some pointless scenes, some plot holes and as another user said, what a disappointing finale...Cell 213 is as underground as possible, even tho it has quite a distribution, some good actors in it, but the plot never gave them a chance. Will not recommend it, not even for a horror junkie.Cheers!

Total waste of time. Cinematography was good, the ending was terrible.....no closure, no answers, no real resolution. There had better not be a second one as it can only get worse from here. The premise of the movie was pretty cool and had a lot of potential. I feel like the writers at the end of the script just wanted to end it. Like I said, the only thing that was really disappointing was the ending and lack of closure. There is no background history with anyone, especially the culprits involved in the evilness of prison. It's entertaining at least due to the violence and almost believable cast. The side stories were weak to say the least. When the credits started to roll I'm not gonna lie, I was just shocked that it lacked a resolution to an almost 2 hour movie. Total bag of BS. Other than that, enjoy folks!