In short: The Mind’s Eye (2015)

It’s 1990, and Scanners-style psychokinetic powers are a thing in the population. Rambling psychokinetic Zack (Graham Skipper) is lured into the private, secret, and deeply dubious psi research program of Dr. Slovak (John Speredakos, increasingly – and rather wonderfully - chewing the scenery) with the promise of seeing his old flame Rachel (Lauren Ashley Carter) – also a psychokinetic and in the research program – again. Turns out Slovak is a bit of a liar, for while Rachel is indeed in the program – and is now motivated with an opportunity for seeing Zack again as he is the other way around – Slovak clearly (and for only vague reasons) does not plan on reuniting the lovers ever again.

The research program isn’t quite as interested in helping its subjects control or suppress their powers as promised either. In fact, while Slovak has developed an intermittently working drug to suppress psychic powers for a time, his research goal is to give himself psychokinetic powers. This he does by extracting some of his victims’ spinal fluid, extracting the magical psi juice, and injecting that into his own neck. Which, as it turns out, has rather severe side effects.

So things will get bloody once Zack realizes he has developed a tolerance against the psi-suppressants he is shot up with, and he and Rachel go on the run.

Obviously, Joe Begos’s The Mind’s Eye is – aesthetically and in its content – deeply inspired by early 80s psi thrillers and horror movies, and plays out like the entertaining dumb fun brother of Cronenberg’s Scanners, a role all of that film’s actual sequels aspired to but never managed to reach. The closeness to the Cronenberg film (and comparable movies) is very much one of general aesthetics, exploding heads, people making ultra-constipated faces during psychic battles (best in show in that regard is the inevitable – yet lovely - Larry Fessenden who should be in even more movies to make psychic battle faces), and the basic plot. What The Mind’s Eye lacks in comparison is any depth whatsoever. This is strictly what you see is what you get surface spectacle cinema.

However, I don’t think that’s a bad thing in this case, for Begos’s movie never pretends to be anything else, nor does it try to be anything more than a movie about people with psychic powers bloodily battling one another. Begos is rather good at what he’s doing here, too, achieving a unified and highly effective aesthetic on a very low budget, and making up for what he lacks in the opportunity to shoot large action set pieces with a mostly fantastic eye for more intimate as well as doubly bloody action, the sort of thing that should embarrass quite a few people shooting direct-to-DVD action movies that never manage to look as good nor feel as exciting.

In its own way, The Mind’s Eye is pretty much a perfect film, achieving what it sets out to do flawlessly, while looking good and splattering a lot of bodily fluids across the screen (some of it pleasantly chocolate-coloured).

In short: Pod (2015)

When his brother Martin (Brian Morvant) leaves his physician brother Ed (Dean Cates) a disturbed sounding and more than just a little disquieting message on his answer phone, Ed grabs their estranged alcoholic sister Lyla (Lauren Ashley Carter) and drives off to the cabin in the middle of nowhere where Martin lives to stage a neat little family intervention.

Martin, you see, has been having psychological problems ever since he left the army, perhaps based on what may or may not have happened to him in one of the last US wars. His last institutionalization was on Ed’s head, though he isn’t quite convinced anymore that was the right idea to help Martin get better. Or rather, he isn’t until Lyla and he arrive at Martin’s cabin. There, Martin doesn’t just threaten them with a rifle for a bit but also starts off on an insane, long, and very loud rant about the experiments the government did on him, the “pods” they created as horrible weapons, how he found one of these pods in the woods – or maybe it found him - and how how he has now locked it away in his cellar. From here on out, things escalate rather quickly, for as insane as Martin sounds, he really has something rather monstrous locked away down there and the government – as represented by yet another Larry Fessenden cameo – truly is somehow involved.

Sure sure sure, yes yes yes, Mickey Keating’s indie horror exercise in conspiracy theories and mad screeching is not the most original of films, and it’s true, it can be a somewhat annoying film thanks to its insistence on ever-increasing loudness and cheap shock effects.

However, watching Pod, I found myself mostly enjoying it, the shameless and unapologetic way it mixes alien conspiracy theories’ greatest hits, its clear disinterest in being tasteful when that means giving up on having fun or diluting the pure power of SCREAMING LOUDLY IN YOUR FACE for at least two thirds of its running time. And while that might sound pretty dumb, this isn’t a dumb film at all – at least, the way it plays with its clichés feels rather clever to me, playful without becoming lamely ironic.

Obviously, this sort of film needs acting dialled up to eleven, and that’s exactly what the small cast provides for your eighty minutes of dysfunctionality. Particularly Morvant gives his all in what might not be the most authentic portrayal of somebody suffering a psychotic break but certainly is an effective – and very loud – one, leaving no head un-pounded and no eardrum still.