Stephen King Calls Cell His Most Underrated Movie — Did Audiences Miss It?

Stephen King adaptations are basically a seasonal thing at this point. The last time a full year slipped by without a new one was 2008. Some are great, some are rough, and a few get lost in the noise. King has a personal pick for the latter: Cell, the John Cusack/Samuel L. Jackson thriller that never really got a fair shake.

King stumps for Cell

Asked which of his adaptations got judged too harshly, King gave a quick nod to Dreamcatcher (with the caveat that he owes it another watch) and then really planted his flag for Cell.

'I frankly never understood why people didn’t like Cell, because to me that was a terrific, eccentric movie with some really eccentric, strange performances in it. John Cusack at his best, and Samuel L. Jackson is terrific.'

He also admitted his taste can be, let’s say, enthusiastic.

'I’m one of the people where the worst movie I ever saw, I thought it was f--king great! So, you know, even things like Robot Monster when I was a kid, I thought, "Oh man, that’s great!"'

The story: tech apocalypse with a human hook

Cell follows Clay Riddell (Cusack), a struggling artist who bails on his wife and son to chase his dream of publishing a graphic novel. A year later, just as he’s about to call with good news, his phone dies — which turns out to be lucky, because a mysterious signal hits and anyone on a call turns into a twitchy, zombie-adjacent killer the survivors dub the Phoners. Clay vows to find his family and crosses paths with Tom (Jackson), a train conductor who becomes his partner on the road.

The opening stretch absolutely rips: a girl smashing her head into a wall, planes dropping from the sky, people suddenly mauling each other — it’s a sharp, unnerving kickoff that the movie never fully tops.

What went wrong (and what didn’t)

Despite the King pedigree and two marquee stars, Cell went straight to video and critics pounced. It sits at 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the common gripe that it leans on stock zombie beats instead of burrowing into the novel’s bigger ideas. The ending doesn’t help — it’s one of those choices that lands with a thud — and turning the book’s Raggedy Man from a symbolic figure into a literal, physical villain was, politely, not the call.

King’s right about the performances, though. Jackson is steady and compelling — not in full Pulp Fiction gear, but sharp — and he brings out an engaged, grounded turn from Cusack. The movie goes quiet in stretches, but it’s watchable, and there’s a clear, clever twist on the zombie template: blame the tech, not a virus or a curse. That angle keeps it entertaining and just wary enough about the gadgets glued to our hands.

The behind-the-scenes detour

The production had its own wobble. Back in 2008, Eli Roth was lined up to direct after Hostel: Part II. He walked away over disagreements with the studio’s direction and because he preferred to focus on originals at the time. Would his version have landed better? Probably. He was in the pocket then.

So is Cell actually underrated?

As a sci-fi thriller, it never quite nails the dismount, but the premise hooks, the opener is nasty in the right way, and the leads do real work. If you skipped it because of the reviews or that straight-to-video stigma, it’s a better sit than its reputation suggests — not a lost masterpiece, but a solid, eccentric swing that deserved a louder ring. And if you find yourself nodding along with King, you’re not alone.