Okay, I’ve asked on other resources before, and no one could help me out, so I really hope someone here can. Problem is, it’s been over a decade since I’ve seen this, so my memory’s crapped out on most of the content of the movie. I’ll try to describe what I remember.
I’m certain I saw it on the Sci-Fi channel in the late ’90s or early ’00s. Color movie, seemed pretty low-budget (think like Asylum Films), English language. I remember the movie had a group of people trying to escape this place, where different rooms seemed to affect them differently. The one scene I remember pretty clearly, a man and a woman enter this room with those round yellow smiley faces on the walls. The two people had been pretty serious, but suddenly start laughing uncontrollably. Through sheer will, they leave the room. The camera pans across the room following them, but then pans back as they leave and the smileys have turned sinister-looking (think something similar to this (http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m54/chrisnc2475/evil_smiley.jpg).
I remember at the time, thinking that this movie reminded me a lot of Cube, only the rooms seemed to have emotional traps and weren’t cubical. At the end of the movie, if I’m not totally mistaken, it turns out it was some sort of alien experiment or something. Like I said, my memory is fuzzy on this, so I may be way off about the ending.
Please tell me this was an actual thing, and not something I dreamed up (and if it’s something I dreamed up, I need to write this screenplay out). I hate having vivid imagery in my head of the room with the smileys, but not knowing where the hell I saw it. I’m not totally crazy, am I?
You didn’t make it up, because I saw it too. For a long time I thought I’d seen “The Cube” because the description was so similar. I don’t remember what it was called, but I’m asking the people I watched it with. I’ll post again if they remember!
Ok, so the friend I watched it with doesn’t remember, but my husband was there too and says maybe “The Cell” with Jennifer Lopez. I’m not sold, but it’s something.
Hm. I don’t think it was the cell, but I’ll watch it again to be sure. I’m pretty sure I have that floating around here somewhere.
And yeah, there were striking similarities to Cube. Heck, the room I described above seemed a lot like the room in Cube where the geeky dude and the cute brunette in the red dress go in and start getting intimate, but the room has a time dilation (and antigravity?) effect and they grow old and die in each others arms. It was a poignant scene, with them floating and spinning in mid air, wrapped in the flowing material of her red dress. Cube I remember all too well. I even went back to see if the scene I was thinking of came from Cube2 or Cube: Zero. No dice.
But you remember a room of creepy yellow smiley faces?
Yeah, like I said, I’m not sold on it being “The Cell”-let me know if you watch it and see? I don’t remember the smiley faces in particular, but they don’t sound wrong, either. Everything else fits exactly with my memory, right down to being a bit fuzzy on the ending (I’m thinking maybe the ending was a half-hearted twist thing that wasn’t handled well, and paled in comparison to the rest, thus not being very memorable.)