The Cell - You Mind How Your Mind Works?

 (2000) ★★★★☆

It's a film about how your mind works; how you could, by using some sort of sophisticated device, get into someone else's mind and help them get rid of their nightmares or dark side, so they would be healthy and normal again. No doubt our mind is a tricky thing. It convinces us to believe what is not real is real, or what is real is not real. So learning to control your mind is the most vital thing if, of course, you want a happy life.

The first 10 minutes of the film could be quite confusing to some of the viewers. What I mean 'confusing' here is that it's not easy to understand what's really going on there. It may seem like a sci-fi thriller at first, but turns out it's pretty down to earth and interesting. Jennifer Lopez (frankly, her songs suck, but her performances here are decent) is a psychologist-cum-therapist here, who helps patients in a coma regain their consciousness by getting into their mind to help them conquer what they're afraid of; what deters them from waking up. Later, a serial killer falls in a coma after kidnapping his latest prey, a girl being locked up in a glass container slowly drowning to death. Since the killer is the only one who knows her whereabouts, Lopez has to enter his mind and help the police locate the girl before it's too late.

The story itself is not so surprising, but the images are stunning and weird enough to make you sit still. To visualize what's in one's mind is, as a matter of fact, quite difficult, but this film seems to have pulled it off. Believe it or not, everything comes from your mind. The way you see yourself, others, the world, everything, they're all the reflections of your mind. So if you can get a hold of your mind, you can change your attitude, the way you deal with things or people, then your destiny and your life.

Your mind, however, would always like to fool you. That's why you'd buy or do things you don't really need to. That's why you'd be afraid when there's in fact nothing to be afraid of. You have different kinds of emotions since your mind has many desires. And you know what, the spookiest thing of all is, you're dying every second, but your mind tells you that you're not. We're all in a sense the slave of our mind, unless we're able to 'wake up' one day.