The finest performance Sean Young has given since Blade Runner highlights this truly amazing film and showcases some of her best work. The script is superb, the direction like lightning, and the suspense unrelenting. Young sets the tone for the entire film in the first few minutes and they are minutes no one who sees them will ever forget. Young is nothing less than dynamite and unfortunately the rest of the movie suffers a bit. However, an overall outstanding cast, a director working with a screenplay of unique eloquence and imagination all come together to make for one of the finest horror films of all time. An underrated masterpiece that deserved far more recognition.

When it comes to grading this movie, there are stark contrasts because it has some very strong points as well as weak ones. As far as overall story and originality is concerned, this could be one of the better horror movies to come out in the past decade. The problem for me was that this movie has some of the weakest dialog I've seen in a film. Conversations between characters is very unnatural and at times you feel as if the actors may have skipped over a few lines. The part in the movie when the Russian psychiatrist explains to Alex what he is and what is happening to him is the only exception to this. I wouldn't say that this ruins the movie seeing as how the story is so intriguing, but having such a strong concept coupled with weak dialog would make this movie average at best.If you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth checking out, just don't expect anything profound coming from the mouths of the actors.

HeadSpace There is always a certain urge, controllable, yet always persistent in everyday thoughts that deviates from the norm, sets itself at a distance and realizes the ridiculousness of common event. The urge, it takes it's shape as a distortion, an unrealistic fascination that changes our perception of a constant moment. This quandary of the human mind is a focus of the horror genre.It takes a lot of guts, so to say, to step into the horror genre, but not a lot of wit. Anyone is capable of tricking someone else, easy to pop out behind a closed door, simple even to cue the wolf's howl on a dark moonlit night. The movies, then, that truly stand out in horror, are those that not only stay on a well-founded formula, but continue the internal analytic deviation in the voyeur's eyes by stretching the limits of what is believable.Then, there are the movies, such as Houten's HeadSpace, starring Christopher Denham, that go and above and beyond the dilemma of how to make a monster unbelievably horrific, but to make the story real, to take back that previously forsaken realm of storytelling. Without abandoning the human emotions of empathy, sympathy, and character attachment, HeadSpace delivers a full force horror entourage. The most actually interesting thing about the story, aside from the numerous sub-plots, is that the story on paper, might even sound believable for a moment. The only thing bringing us away from the dangerous precipice of the "normal" belief suspension commonly used in film, is that it is indeed, only a movie.The story follows Alex, a mid-20's inner city male. The striking yet correlated traits of confused innocence, uncouth arrogance, selfless helplessness, stand out amongst the youthful characters he surrounds himself with. He is a homesitter, and artist, who collects unemployment, and drinks himself silly some nights, while still maintaining certain hidden truths about his life and future. The trouble begins one day while playing chess in the park, but by the time the story ends, we're taken into a world where we are all just pawns to a game of life and death played in realms we do not belong.My advice for approaching this film, is to pay attention to nuance. The dialogue is phenomenal for character development, the most crucial part of a horror/slasher film, and the plot that intertwines religion with metaphysics and science, is genius, but don't forget to watch everything else. The score is great, although not the best, and the cinematography is simple and effective."Checkmate." 10/10

I'm not sure what's more disturbing; this terrible, terrible movie or the fact that people are actually rating it positively on this website.What is going on? Is this the first film you people have seen, or are you on drugs? This film is 100% complete and utter GUFF! Oh Christ! What makes it all the more unforgivable is that both the trailer and the first 15 minutes of the film create the impression that this is actually going to be a good film - but then it simply slides and just gets worse and worse and worse. By half way through the film you just want to switch it off.Whatever you do, don't watch this film. It's not even one of those bad films that you have to watch because they're SO bad its amazing (like The Postman) - its just plain RUBBISH.The person who made this film should go back to whatever they were doing before.