10 Worst Stephen King Film Adaptations
8. Cell
Cell is one of King's better, recent novels. Published in 2006, it uses mobile phones as the method of delivering the evil code to turn the world into raving, violent zombies. It is a hardly subtle turn on the theme of technology destroying lives and yet it works. The characters are touching and believable, the threat is constant and the villains could be anywhere.
The film manages to squander what should have been an easy premise to turn into gold. Zombie films, which they currently have run out of steam, were all the rage and with the likes of 28 Days Later, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake and World War Z, there was plenty of room to play with genre.
The main issue is that it doesn't try and do anything new. There is no true exploration of the cause and the characters mostly just amble to and fro for the duration. Reliable actors like John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, reuniting after the more successful 1408, look mostly bored as they get through one dull scene after another.
There is no sense of menace nor urgency in the film. There is no real clarity over the cause of the outbreak and no real destination. It is a poorer version of what the Walking Dead was at its height, though it is arguably a better version of the Walking Dead on its worst days.