deathlightdb
You can't direct a pastiche without adding a few humorous nods to the elements you're using. Otherwise it simply comes off as painfully cliché, overdone crap. I agree with the "most helpful" review, in that it definitely feels like a student film. In fact, that was my very first critical thought. I was somewhere around the half hour mark, and said to myself, "This is like a bad student film." None of the actors stood out, nor were they bad enough to be funny/ made fun of. For instance: Jeremy Irons in Dungeons and Dragons? That is gloriously bad ham acting, so bad that it actually makes the loop back to good, because it's just so damn funny at times. The villain could have taken some notes from Irons' performance there- or indeed, ANY time that Irons has played a villain- because he never hit that over-the-top stride that should be seen in both the 80's horror and pastiche genre.This film either needed to take itself much more or much less seriously.
perkin2000
Fantastic, fun, low budget, daft horror film made for peanuts. Just the sorta thing we here at Plop Towers love watching.Written and directed by Joe Begos who also done the cracking Almost Human.If you ask me, the horror genre, and films in general, need chaps like young Begos. People who won't let the lack of budget get in the way of telling a story, and doing so well.Same goes for anyone who reads this, if you want the world to hear your voice, do it now. Don't wait for external endorsement, sponsorship or someone to hold your hand, it won't happen. You'll probably fail, but what do you wan't to say when your ticket's punched? You tried your best, or you thought about it a lot?Good luck.(Originally at www.filmplop.blogspot.com)
S. Soma
Telekinesis, from just a relatively minor plot element all the way up to being the entire subject matter of a movie, has been around in cinema for quite some time. Many famous and notable actors have either wielded The Great Power directly or have been closely involved with those who did: John Travolta, Julie Andrews, Chevy Chase, Sissy Spacek, Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, to name just a few, have all lent their names and reputations to flicks involving telekinesis. Heck fire, even two Knights of the Realm, Sir Alec Guinness and Sir Richard Burton, were quite capable of throwing things around without lifting a finger.All of which would tend to suggest, to me at least, that telekinesis is reasonably legitimate as source material for a movie, and that good movies with decent acting and imaginative plot lines can be made about it.But you certainly wouldn't know it from "The Mind's Eye". Wow, what a stinker. Even terrible movies usually have SOME redeemable characteristic or element that prevent them from being COMPLETELY horrible. "Plan 9 from Outer Space", widely reputed to be the worst movie ever made, achieved a sort of so-bad-it's-art status. But not this dog.I am extremely forgiving of movies involving science fiction, psychic phenomena, magic, horror, fantasy, fairy tales and so on. I'll willingly and voluntarily watch movies that would make most people's eyes bleed and work to find something worthwhile in them. But I couldn't even watch this one through to the end. When a movie makes you profoundly aware that you're wasting precious minutes out of your too-short life, it's a very bad sign.Sociopathic scientist wants to steal telekinetic powers for himself and is willing to torture and/or kill anyone to get them. That's it. That's the plot. So not even trying there.You would think that having telekinetic powers would give a person a decided advantage in a conflict, but no. Every time the good guys gain the advantage in some fracas, they run away. They often have the bad guys, and sometimes even the primary antagonist, completely at their mercy and they just run away, every time. Because if they didn't the movie would mercifully be over, and we can't have that. The good guys know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the bad guys will keep coming NO MATTER WHAT and will stop at nothing to achieve their evil objective, but they keep letting the bad guys go to keep stopping at nothing again and again and again. Meanwhile the bad guys leave a trail of dead bodies and bloody pieces a mile wide. That's it… That's the whole movie.When this "strategy" eventually results in the father of the primary protagonist having his brains splattered against a wall (meaning, of course, that the main protagonist is entirely responsible for the death of his own father), it doesn't change the primary protagonist's behavior not one whit.The primary protagonist's girlfriend, also a telekinetic, seems to understand the reality of the situation and moves to finish off the bad guys fairly early on, but the primary protagonist actually STOPS her.Only when our 87 minute run time winds down does the protagonist do what he should've done in the first 10 minutes: kill the primary antagonist with telekinesis.The writer here clearly doesn't understand the notion of willing suspension of disbelief. Either that or he just doesn't care. Audiences can readily accept incredible premises like telekinesis. But they CAN'T accept characters behaving in ridiculous and inexplicable ways given the premises.Directorial High Point: in the Final Showdown, the protagonist and the antagonist face-off in a telekinetic grudge match. Bear in mind that the primary antagonist has managed to acquire much more powerful telekinetic powers than the primary protagonist by this point. The director could've done something dull and unimaginative like, oh, have the protagonist and antagonist stare at each other, virtually immobile, for 2 or 3 minutes while yelling "ahhhhhhhhh!" until the antagonist suddenly explodes. But that would've been stupid. So he made the antagonist float about 8 feet in the air while the two of them stare at each other, virtually immobile, for 2 or 3 minutes while yelling "ahhhhhhhh!" until the antagonist suddenly explodes. Oh, yes. Much better.The acting is atrocious, the writing is absolutely appalling, the special effects are abysmal, the music is canned and repetitive.Some people are comparing this movie to "Scanners" and, from a science fiction standpoint, that would be completely off-base. "The Mind's Eye" is, as far as I can tell, completely about telekinesis. It doesn't have anything to do with any other psychic powers such as telepathy, mind control and etc. Additionally, "Scanners" DOESN'T share many of the plot elements within "the Mind's Eye" such as the romantic involvement, the death of the primary protagonist in protection of the love interest and so on. The correlation with "The Fury" I would argue is much closer. Even the ultimate end of the primary antagonist is identical.Larry Fessenden is in this movie, clearly just doing the Actor Trying to Make a Living thing. He mostly plays typecast bad guy character roles (as far as I remember) and he does a decent job with the 2 or 3 minutes he gets and goes as far as he can with the thin writing.There was one plot point that I did get a kick out of: know how you, a mere mortal, get the drop on a telekinetic who could theoretically squash you like a grape? You sneak up on them and put a bag over their head.Yep. That's how it's done.
