Mindcage - Mente criminale

This movie is a cheap ripoff of SOTL complete with laughably bad script and bad acting all around. I kinda knew this going in but I watched it because I thought it would be good for a laugh, kinda like when I watch a Nick Cage movie. But unfortunately this movie is basically just a dud and not even a So bad it's good movie. Even John Malkovich does a rather humdrum job of portraying a crazed serial killer. The entire project is so amateurishly done that its hard to believe it ever got finished. Any producer should have put this thing out of it's misery early on as it comes across like a high school project by clueless wannabe actors and production people. A very disappointing dumb waste of time.

This is such a blatant rip off of silence of the lambs that it doesn't even try to hide it. They should've just name the two characters Clarice and Hannibal and got it over with. With that being said, it's not a terrible movie by any stretch but so many parallels to SOTL that's it's hard to ignore and enjoy.

John Malkovitch is excellent as always, but I'm surprised that he took the role knowing about the rip off. In the movie they are chasing a copy cat killer which is interesting because this is a copy cat movie.

They even trick the serial killer into leaving his cell so they can go in and investigate just like they did to Lecter in SOTL.

Love the concept,love this genre. That's where it starts and well ends.

We tried to watch it twice,it landed up being background noise and then we decided to find literally anything else to watch.

This movie has A grade actors but thats all.

The lead actress was not a great choice for this role.

It's comes across as her reading her lines rather than becoming the character. She is like an amber Heard choice pretty face no depth.

It was badly written I felt bad for the actors having to act out those lines.

If they got better writers and a better leading lady it would be an awesome movie. Its meh.

A female protagonist detective (Mary / Melissa Roxburgh / Manifest) is teaming up with a veteran detective (Jake / Martin Lawrence / Bad Boys) to chase what seem to be a copy-cat killer from one of Jake's old cases. As the investigation goes deeper, more and more eerie details from the past are slowly unveiled, leading up to an unexpected ending. The main, and maybe only, person that can help them is the original killer himself ("The Artist" / John Malkovitch / Being John Malkovitch) which Mary must go into a deep psychological relationship with, in order to get him to shed light on their investigation.

Sounds familiar? Maybe because you've seen movies such as "Silence of the Lambs" or other detective dramas that following similar line. The difference here is that the production quality of "Mindcage" is pisspoor, Lionsgate managed to produce a movie at a Hallmark TV level. The special effects are as if done by a child, the foot chases are laughable and the green-screen (view outside the windows of the car, for example) are almost insulting to the viewer.

That low production quality and lack of good direction, recording and editing, makes the decent main actors performance look childish and amateuristic. The other performances are even worse, not even one of them landing a believable role, the worst offender being the facility's manager (Dr. Loesch / Neb Chupin) which is apparently a network engineer turned actor- somehow I was not surprised to learn that.

You know if you're an actor that is about to play a violinist, you might take a couple of lessons just so it looks good on screen, or if you are going to play a cop, visit a police-station for a day or two so that your demeanor is correct? Well, none of that here, the actors are as if they are pulled from their beds, being dressed with a $50 wardrobe and $10 makeup from Walmart and lights, camera, action...

The low production quality also distracts from the story and it being a bit out-there (no spoilers here- but just to say there is a twist somewhere in there) makes it a bit hard to follow the movie at times, but I made an extra effort to stick around to the end, and if you manage to ignore all the faults of this movie it is not completely un-enjoyable. It's just that there are so many movies better than this one out there to spend your time on.

I hope Melissa Roxburgh lands a better gig next time because she has the quality of a leading actress but with movies like this it is hard lash out a good performance. Guide: No nudity, no sexual situations, but several dead bodies and hints of physical harm. Exact score: 48 / 100.

Serial killer movies is quite difficult to make. Much like horror movies, they are constructed around cliche. The key is character build up and craftmanship. Mindcage is full of cliche and none of craftmanship and character build up.

At times the movie seem to be over the top constructed around the cliches, and at that at beginner level, i.e. The red herrings are too obvious, and theses are crucial to mystery movies.

The movie also lacks fluency, i.e. The scenes are mechanically put together in segments with disturbedly incoherency.

Actorwise the selection is poorly made, especially the supporting roles. The husband of the lead character and the prison psychologist is a joke. Martin Lawrence will never be able to pull of a serious character/movie. Malkovitch tries his best, but delivers his standard unsettling character. Knepper is good as the sheriff and is always watchable.

It is not a terrible movie as such, but could have been done better by working the script more and used other actors. The movie uses some tricks to make it different from other serial killer movies. I cannot reveal them here since it would spoil the movie, but I would have used these tricks more and created fusion of horror/serial killer/mystery movie.

All in all, it is not a terrible movie, I have seen much worse. The movie is just flat. IMDB rates it, to this date, 4,1/10 and that is quite correct.