STARRING: Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D’Onofrio and Tara Subkoff

Whatever . . .

Never before have so many memorable images come from such a forgettable film. "The Cell" — the big screen debut of music video auteur Tarsem Singh — features some astonishing visuals, but they can’t redeem this pretentious mess. Singh has failed to realize that moviegoers expect more from a flick that just pretty pictures. A music video can get away with being flashy and incoherent, but the same rules don’t always apply to movies. Self-indulgent cinematography, a hackneyed story and a limp cast overwhelm an intriguing premise. If I had to think of one word to describe how I feel about this movie, that word would be . . . ick.

D'Onofrio struts around in outlandish make-up that makes him look like Tim Curry's understudy in Legend.

I’m a pretty easygoing guy when it comes to movies. Not too much gets under my skin, but there are scenes in "The Cell" that really bothered me. I understand that this flick is supposed to be a journey into the mind of a serial killer so I wasn’t expecting "The Rugrats Movie." I’m betting that a tour of a murderer’s psyche is a pretty strange trip. Even so, there’s some major freakiness going on here.

Bizarre and grotesque images have been used quite effectively in many movies. Take a look at "Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven," for example. But when an entire film is weird and nasty just for shock value, I start to question its merits. Singh and writer Mark Protosevich (the upcoming sci-fi flick, "Imposter") seem to be outrageous just because they can. There are a few moments that are gratuitous to the point of being offensive.

Despite the distasteful content, Singh is successful in presenting a landscape that’s never before been seen onscreen. We go to the movies to be transported to another place and on that level, "The Cell" delivers. I’ll hand it to the guy; he’s an accomplished stylist. Some scenes will have you feeling like you’ve fallen into a Dali painting. However, there’s a difference between "looking good" and "being good." Maybe with the right script and a producer that can restrain his impulses, Singh (who directed REM’s "Losing my Religion" video) could make a really good movie. At the moment, his obsession with the film’s visuals cost us a decent story and gripping performances.

"The Cell" is like a bad dream brought on by stale pizza, warm Jagermeister and repeating playings of Jennifer Lopez's "On the Six" album.

Jennifer Lopez ("Out of Sight") plays Catherine Deane, a passionate but inexperienced therapist practicing an experimental form of therapy. Using cutting edge technology, she’s able to transport her consciousness into the minds of her patients. Serial killer Carl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D’Onofrio from "The Thirteenth Floor") likes to kidnap women and hold them prisoner in a glass-enclosed cell. After 40 hours, he floods the cell and drowns them. When Stargher lapses into a coma before confessing the location of his latest victim, FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn from "Swingers") convinces Catherine to use her techniques to find the girl before it’s too late.

The technology that allows Catherine to pop into people’s heads is never fully explained. She wears some funky red jumpsuit, puts a towel over her head and hangs suspended from a bunch of wires. How this crap is supposed to teleport her into somebody’s brain, I’ll never know. She looks like the warm-up act for Cirque de Soleil. Her cronies spout some technobabble about how the device transfers neurons or some such, but we’re really just supposed to suspend our disbelief and move on. It’s like those old episodes of "Star Trek" where we’d have to accept that a chunk of styrofoam was a portal to another dimension in order to get to the good stuff. Just trust us, they’d say, don’t you want to see Captain Kirk make out with the green chick?

Catherine cruises around in Stargher’s noggin seeing all kinds of crazy things. It’s like a bad dream brought on by stale pizza, warm Jagermeister and repeating playings of Lopez’s "On the Six" album. In this psychedelic realm, Stargher’s darker impulses are personified as a demon king who wants to make Catherine his queen. D’Onofrio struts around in outlandish make-up that makes him look like Tim Curry’s understudy in "Legend." Meanwhile, Stargher’s "redeemable" qualities take the shape of a frightened little boy. Catherine tries to befriend the child in order to learn the cell’s whereabouts. Unfortunately, she is captured by the evil Stargher and becomes trapped in this godforsaken dreamscape.

I know how she feels.

Novak then plugs into the device in order to rescue Catherine. He gets sucked into Stargher’s mind and wanders through this netherworld until he finds her. Catherine’s stuck in some kind of trance, wearing a get-up from the Victoria’s Secret catalog (S&M edition). The demon king attacks Novak and starts yanking out his intestines. He howls in pain, enduring this unbearable torture.

I REALLY know how he feels.

Catherine snaps out of her stupor just in time to save Novak and together they find the location of the cell. While Novak goes back to the real world to find the kidnapped girl, Catherine confronts Stargher’s dark side. Through her bonding with the little Stargher, she has realized that the killer is a tortured soul. Catherine attempts to ease his suffering through a few tender moments with the little Stargher. I see where the filmmakers are going with this idea, but it just doesn’t wash. They spent the entire film showing us that their villain is one sick puppy. Now, they’re saying all he really needs is a hug.

Gosh, he didn’t mean to torture and kill all those helpless victims. His homicidal rage was just the result of a bad childhood and some mental problems. Cut the guy some slack, will ya? A better film could add some dramatic weight to this argument, but "The Cell" is no "Dead Man Walking." In the context of this movie, the concept of a sympathetic serial killer just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

If Vaughn continues to make stinkers like this one, the only gig he'll be able to land is a guest spot on "Walker, Texas Ranger."

Like most of the film’s characters, Stargher’s motivation is slight. We get some disturbing scenes of child abuse in an attempt to explain his methods, but he’s mainly bad because the script demands it. Catherine and Novak are also given tragic pasts to help flesh out their characters, but things are never completely explored. The actors are primarily used to get us from one scene to the next. They’re more like part of the set than the focus of the movie. A point of contrast against the film’s surreal set pieces.

Maybe the title refers to how the cast felt about the movie. I certainly felt imprisoned and all I did was watch it. Actors have to pay their bills too so you shouldn’t blame them for being in a bad movie. Do you get mad at the mailman for delivering junk mail? That said, what was Vince Vaughn thinking?

Here’s a guy that just a few years ago had red hot potential. His breakthrough role as Trent in "Swingers" (a great movie by the way), helped him snag a part in the blockbuster sequel, "The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2." Everybody was thinking that "the next big thing" had arrived. Then he made a series of films that could be best described as mediocre: "Return to Paradise," "The Locusts," the remake of "Psycho." With every film, the dream died a little more.

The best work he’s done since "Swingers" is a quiet little family drama called "A Cool, Dry Place," which went straight to video last year. It’s a great film with an incredible performance by Vaughn as a single dad, but only about two people in the country saw it. A few more dogs like "The Cell" and the only gig Vaughn will get is as a guest star on "Walker, Texas Ranger."

I don’t know what’s going on in that guy’s head, but I’m hoping that this tripe isn’t typical of what he’s getting offered nowadays. Maybe Jennifer Lopez should squeeze back into that red jumpsuit, plop a towel over her head and take a quick peek between our boy’s ears. In the meantime, please do what all involved with this flick should have done before the production even started:

Avoid "The Cell" like a fruitcake at Christmas. It is a monumental waste of your time.