THE MIND'S EYE (2015)

Studio:       RLJ Entertainment
Director:    Joe Begos
Writer:       Joe Begos
Producer:  Joe Begos, Josh Ethier, Graham Skipper, Zak Zeman
Stars:     Graham Skipper, Lauren Ashley Carter, John Speredakos, Larry Fessenden, Noah Segan, Michael A. LoCicero, Jeremy Gardner, Matt Mercer, Patrick M. Walsh, Josh Ethier, Brian Morvant, Susan T. Travers

Review Score:

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Summary:

A man struggling to control his psychokinetic powers spurs a revolt against a mad doctor attempting to exploit his patients’ mental abilities.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

November 1990 - Two Connecticut State Police officers stop their car to question Zack Connors as Zack walks alone down a snowy road. Zack tries warning the two men when their encounter becomes physical, but Zack is unable to control his anger-induced psychokinesis and attacks using his mind powers. Zack is still captured.

Dr. Michael Slovak comes to the police station. With a black sack over his head that prevents him from using his powers, Zack listens as Slovak tells him about the Slovak Institute for Psychokinetics, where the doctor purportedly studies PKs to help them control their abilities. Slovak injects a serum into Zack that inhibits his psychokinesis. Zack agrees to commit himself to the institute after Slovak reveals one of his patients is Rachel Meadows, a PK that Zack has a connection with regarding an unspecified incident in Chicago.

For months, Slovak conducts separate sessions with Zack and Rachel without allowing them to see each other. Slovak continues administering the ability-inhibiting serum to his PKs while he himself secretly receives regular injections of a synthetic serum developed from his patients’ spinal fluid.

February 1991 - Zack tells fellow PK David Armstrong that he believes they are developing a tolerance to Slovak’s serum. Zack has a confrontation with Slovak about the doctor continually refusing his requests to see Rachel. After Zack puts his hands on the doctor, Slovak has his guards restrain Zack in a holding room.

Frustrated with the weekly spinal taps and with being unable to see Zack, Rachel escapes her restraints and attacks a nurse and a facility guard named Vince. Slovak ultimately subdues Rachel himself.

Although hooded and restrained to a bed, Zack uses his muted abilities to make the hood tear and subsequently frees himself. Zack makes it past Vince and breaks out David. The two men escape to the woods to look for Rachel in a separate cabin. While David goes downstairs and frees Rachel, Zack learns that Slovak has PK powers when the two of them have a faceoff involving psychically-controlled furniture. Their fight is interrupted when Rachel enters and points a gun at the doctor. Slovak believes Rachel respects him too much to pull the trigger. Rachel does shoot, but Zack uses his powers to move her arm so that Slovak is only hit in the shoulder. Zack, Rachel, and David escape outside.

David is recaptured, but Zack and Rachel make it to the road where they hijack a car. Confused as to how the doctor developed PK abilities, Rachel tells Zack about the spinal taps and synthetic fluid injections Slovak has been receiving.

While guards Charlie Rayne and Vince remain at the institute with the doctor, Slovak takes loyal PK Travis Levine off of his assignment to track down Cole Reeves and tasks him with locating David and Rachel. Slovak’s guard Kurt accompanies Levine.

Zack brings Rachel to his former home, where he reunites with his father Michael for the first time in ten years. Zack reveals to Rachel that he accidentally killed his mother as a teenager while trying to show her what he could do. Zack and Rachel have sex.

While the doctor continues receiving injections at the institute, Levine and Kurt track the hijacked car to the Connors house. Once the duo is inside, Kurt begins beating Michael. While Rachel hides in a bathtub, Zack comes downstairs to rescue his father. Zack prepares to take down Kurt, but Levine stops him. Michael reveals his own psychic ability when he begins forcing Kurt to tear off his own head. However, Levine shoots and kills Michael before Michael can complete his PK attack.

Levine goes upstairs to look for Rachel. Zack wrestles with Kurt and breaks free. Zack goes after Levine and the two of them have an exhaustive physical fight in the bathroom while Rachel engages with Kurt. Kurt shoots Rachel in her leg, but she levitates Kurt in the air and explodes his head before collapsing in the hallway. Zack is knocked out. Believing everyone to be dead, Levine leaves the house.

Slovak begins mutating from his injections. When Rayne insults the doctor, Slovak levitates him over a stairwell and drops Rayne to his death.

Zack regains conscious and finds Rachel collapsed. Zack leaves her there and calls the police to report what happened before heading towards the institute. On his way, he phones a local hospital and learns that Rachel was actually recovered alive.

David regains his abilities and confronts Slovak in a holding room at the institute. Slovak reveals his plan to open his mind to maximum capacity so he can becomes the most powerful psychokinetic in the world. He then kills David.

Levine stumbles back to the institute and reports what happened. Zack also arrives and kills several guards as he makes his way to Slovak. Zack has a final confrontation with Levine that ends when Levine is decapitated by a levitated ax.

Slovak takes another injection and mutates. Zack and Slovak begin their showdown. Zack kills Vince by psychically throwing an ax into him. Zack and Slovak levitate as each of them bleeds profusely from the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose while psychically combating one another. Both men collapse from overexertion.

Slovak recovers first and escapes to the car outside. Zack recovers and takes one of the doctor’s injections to amplify his abilities. Even with Slovak driving away in the distance, Zack is able to psychically pop the car’s tire, forcing it to overturn and catch fire. Slovak crawls from the wreckage as Zack approaches. The two men have one final showdown that ends when Zack levitates Slovak and explodes his entire body.

Recovering in the hospital, Rachel screams and explodes the television set when she hears a newscast report Slovak’s death.

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Review:

Before its screening at Beyond Fest 2015 in Hollywood, festival programmer Christian Parkes raised a bottle of Schlitz and introduced “The Mind’s Eye” as a movie best experienced with alcohol in hand.  Producer Josh Ethier agreed, twice offering the audience an additional instruction of, “don’t think about it, just watch it.”

That kind of advice usually forewarns of supreme cinematic silliness, i.e. brace for a movie where beers are more useful than brains to find enjoyment in irreverent, outrageous, or otherwise mindless mayhem.  What Parkes and Ethier more accurately intend to indicate in this case is that “The Mind’s Eye” is straight-up psychic horror aiming intentionally for wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor, and then obliterating-the-entire-room action entertainment.  As Ethier also stated, “there’s no subtext here.”  There is no subtlety either, and writer/director Joe Begos wouldn’t want it any other way.

Zack Connors is an on-the-run drifter cut from the same cloth as Dr. David Banner.  You wouldn’t like Zack when he is angry.  That’s when his head tilts down and his eyes tilt up as an outstretched palm sends psychokinetic brainwaves of incredible force into anyone foolish enough to provoke him.

When he learns that lost love Rachel is in the hands of a shady doctor supposedly working to help PKs control their abilities, Zack commits himself for treatment at the Slovak Institute of Psychokinetics.  Dr. Slovak turns out to have more in common with Magneto than with Professor X.  After months of being doped with an ability-inhibiting serum, and continually denied a reunion with Rachel, Zack begins a rebellion revealing the true intent behind the mad doctor’s research.  That spark erupts into a full-blown battle royal so chock full of bursting bodies and exploding heads that Carrie White and Darryl Revok wouldn’t even survive the first round.

Desire plotting more nuanced than that and you’d best look elsewhere.  Background motivations are referred to with Snake Plissken-like cryptics (an “incident in Chicago” is the extent of illumination regarding Zack and Rachel’s past) as the story primarily functions as an incidental setup to make “The Mind’s Eye” a practical makeup effects fan’s dream come true (CGI is used only for wire removal in levitation scenes).  It’s a wet dream too, in the literal sense that every pulsating body part detonates with enough chunky gore to fit back into ten people.

The film is as much of a feast for synth fans’ ears as it is for gorehounds’ eyes.  Genre cinema has ridden retro waves where kitchen sink winks to favorite influences are thrown in whether they fit the homage or not.  Carpenter/Howarth synthesizer scores are one such element that can mar a mood if misused.  With its 1990-1991 setting and obvious influences of Cronenberg and De Palma, the soundscape of “The Mind’s Eye” is a perfect playground for composer Steve Moore’s unsettlingly atmospheric keyboards.  There’s no worry of misguided indulgence here since “The Mind’s Eye” champions moviemaking exuberance anyway.

Graham Reznick’s sound design is equally aces.  Reznick’s tones complement Moore’s pulses by heightening PK displays with pitched tension distracting from ridiculousness.  Without such terrific attention to audio’s importance, every actor would seem to be in a state of perpetual constipation as they strain to sell psychokinesis through clenched teeth and shaking faces.  When it comes to its plentiful “Scanners” moments, the movie is exceptionally good about swelling the soundtrack without making the impending pop predictable, even when you know it is inevitable.

Packed with crashing glass, gunshots, and violently volcanic decapitations, “The Mind’s Eye” is unapologetically loud.  Editing is sharp and the fights look great, though every confrontation has an identical outcome of combatants collapsing only to regain consciousness and look for another fight.

“The Mind’s Eye” is not played for laughs, but if you don’t know ahead of time that the filmmakers are being deliberately on the nose, the movie rightfully reads as ridiculous.  An obvious example is a sex scene between Zack and Rachel cut concurrently with Dr. Slovak receiving painful serum injections.  Director Joe Begos knows exactly what he is doing by juxtaposing everyone’s respective O faces, but there is no getting around how comically the whole presentation comes across.

Most of the actors keep their relative cool in spite of insane theatrics and soap opera dramatics, although John Speredakos in particular goes far enough over the top to fall off the other side.  Speredakos plays Dr. Slovak as the type of villain who licks lips with wide eyes when a captive good guy spits in his face.  Speredakos eventually throws all restraint out the window, sneering with each spoken name and stretching lips back as far as he can while speaking in a Cobra Commander rasp.  It hits a boiling point where one can’t help but imagine a more toned performance suiting the role better.

Keying off that notion, “The Mind’s Eye” undersells its full potential by being too content with wildness over resonant depth.  A little more seriousness with a little less camp and “The Mind’s Eye” would be a greater force to reckon with.  The film is always fierce, but with one character wearing an eyepatch, a clichéd confessional moment requiring “it was an accident” consoling, and excessive close-ups of dropped guns skittering on the floor so the audience always knows where they are, those aforementioned beers are indispensible for focusing on the fun instead of on the foibles.

If you enjoyed this collective’s previous film “Almost Human” (review here), “The Mind’s Eye” is even better as a logical follow-up for a fantastic double feature.  Begos, Ethier, Graham Skipper, et al are clearly a dedicated group having a good time making movies like the ones they loved growing up.  The difference is they have more professionally polished execution than cheap indie efforts chasing childhood dreams.

Entertainment value of “The Mind’s Eye” can be up for debate, but the filmmakers’ commitment cannot.  This is a crew that shot for 36 days, a six and a half week period that most would use to film three productions, in weather that was 20 degrees below zero when it could just as easily have been sunny California.  If that isn’t convincing evidence of sincere desire to deliver maximum boom for the buck, what is?

Review Score:  70

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