From the start this is a film that wears its influences on its sleeve. It wants to Scanners and It wants to be an 80s film. Not a bad thing to strive for. The feel of the film achieves that as does the subject matter yet the details are what lets the film down from being what it set out to be. the acting is good (even though a little over dramatic at times) the effects are good and so is the music - if there is one thing that holds the film back it is the writing. For example when the lead goes on the run, he goes to hide from his pursuers at his father's house. They would never look for him there? It's points like these that hold the film back from really being something great. Obviously this is a low budget film and the film makers did a good job on working with what they had. Maybe on their next film (since I see that the actor and director have worked together before) they can take a little more time and fix the script problems and really make a sci-fi / horror classic.

I did like Joe Begos earlier throwback to the horrors of the eighties Almost Human (2013) but this one wasn't really my cup of cake. For me the story was a bit weak but again, the director Begos made an ode to those heydays in the eighties of psychokinetic flicks like Scanners (1981) and the underestimated Bells (1982) still unavailable on any format, only VHS.What I did like was the effects used towards the end. But you really have to wait until then because when the mind is being tricked by a kinetic one there aren't any effects, it's just the use of the eyes that makes contact of the enemy's mind. But at the end of course they all are against each other and it's there that the gore comes in. Oh yes, I can even say that it's ultra gory at some points but overall it was just above mediocre for me. Maybe some scene's took too long. Nevertheless, if you grew up in the eighties be sure to pick this up but if you're used at the horrors of nowadays you wont like it at all.Gore 2/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

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.

Here's a first for yours truly: a review of a yet-to-be-released film that's currently making the festival circuit. The 'secret movie' and highlight of Brooklyn's Nitehawk Cinema's Halloween 'Nite to Dismember'celebration turned out to be director Joe Bego's follow-up to "Almost Human," the very 80's (particularly Steve Moore's wall-to- wall electronic soundtrack) "The Mind's Eye." What "Turbo Kid" is to 80's post-apocalyptic movies "The Mind's Eye" is to David Cronenberg's "Scanners": a contemporary homage that looks/sounds like the genuine article, right down to the ugly-looking logo of the institute at the center of the intrigue. Per Begos' representative at the screening, the director's aim was to make the sequel/follow-up to "Scanners" that he feels the actual "Scanners" sequels didn't live up to. It takes an awful lot of trouble for "The Mind's Eye's" psychokinetic characters to flex their mental muscles. A simple ax or gun seems to do the trick better for most of the film. Even though it mercilessly teases early on that big exploding heads and psychokinetic duels are coming, it's not until the final act that "The Mind's Eye" truly goes berserk in a good way. You know, like "Rabid" and "The Brood" and, yes, "Scanners."Personally I feel "The Mind's Eye" has some shortcomings in the casting of its leads. Either that or Begos deliberately went with actors that feel miscast (Graham Skipper) or way over the top (John Speredakos) to match similar bad casting in Cronenberg's late 70's/early 80's films. That would be an even more meta tribute to the Canadian master of body horror than the "Videodrome"-like opening titles/fonts that start the movie. At least the supporting cast is populated with low-budget horror luminaries, from Larry Fessenden ("I Sell the Dead") and Jeremy Gardner ("The Battery") to Noah Segan ("Starry Eyes") and Lauren Ashley Carter ("The Woman"). For a 2015 low-budget film that sets its story in the early 90's (which makes it feel closer to Cronenberg's prime decades) the action is decent and the deaths/gore off-the-charts groovy, something "Scanners 2 & 3" definitely skimped on. For fans of body horror missing the old Cronenberg now that the genuine article is doing mostly psychologically-heavy stuff (not that I'm complaining), "The Mind's Eye" will make for a pleasant and entertaining evening's entertainment. Me and the Nitehawk Halloween crowd really dug it.