Film Review: The Mind (2009)

SYNOPSIS:

Years ago a man was brutally attacked and murdered, his attackers severing every limb from his body and burying them in different places so that he may never be found. Years later his pieces are being found, one at a time by a group of six people who have nothing in common except the need to kill for “the mind”.

REVIEW:

Directed by: Isaac Williams
Starring: Victoria DePaul, Jean Brooks, Jason Goldberg, Kevin Meehan

“All six will kill for The Mind”

From the very get go Isaac Williams 2009 feature film (clocking in at 117 minutes) lets you know that it is going to be rollercoaster trip. The film gets your attention right away as a man, who is only listed in credits as the Mind, is obviously doing some magic in the dark arts variety. During this sequence he is seen painting blood onto naked woman, the whole scene gave me flashbacks to the European exploitation films of the 1970’s and this isn’t a bad thing. After a few scenes of this suddenly a group of bad guys show up to ruin his party, did I say bad guys I meant to say the notorious bad guys known as the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan storms into the house and drags the man outside, they are then shown using an ax to sever his arms and legs (all while the poor guy is alive) and finally finish with his head. The credits roll and the viewer is left with only those fantastic images in their own minds for a few minutes.

When the film starts again we start getting introduced to various different people. None of these people are exactly the same and we are simply offered glimpses into their lives. One of the women cooks dinner for her husband every night and makes sure that all of the plates and silver wear are in their proper places. There’s a woman who spends her nights in the bar taking home whatever happens to be available so long as it loves her for a few hours (the scene in which a young man wakes up in her house gave me flashbacks to encounters that have happened in my own life). There is also the loving bear of a husband, a couple of younger men one of whom seems already like a sociopath before the fun even starts to happen. Anyway each of these characters are introduced by a name of a body part, for instance the loving wife who makes sure everything is perfect is the “left leg”.

The film really has no set plot line; we simply watch each of these individuals in their lives as they start to become possessed by strange dreams. In these dreams we see the KKK murdering the man from before the credits, and it also appears that these dreams cause some pretty horrible headaches to their victims. All of the six tell their loved ones that they have work to do and almost as soon as those words come out of their mouths they begin to wander around the woods and other places until they find the spot where their body part is buried.

The fun really starts to happen after these skeletal remains start to be found. Some of the possessed just go all out and start killing prostitutes, or they take the role of a desperate woman only to show up at male dominatrix’s houses and kill them. Some of the possessed save the blood from their murders and cleanse their body parts with them, others do not, and again nothing is really explained you just have to put the whole thing together yourself.

One of my favorite scenes however involved a young man who upon becoming possessed invites his group of young friends over to his house for a party. The guest begin to arrive one at a time because you see he kills them with a large bike lock then cleans up and hides the body while his door bell rings letting him know that he has another guest, and another sacrifice. This happens a wonderful three times before Mr. Williams moves onto the next body part.

The possessed in the film of course have no happy endings, some of them are killed while in the act of trying to murder for the mind. Others are driven away from their families, like the bear of a husband whose wife finally opens his garage to see what he has been working on only to find a group of dead bodies collected there. Just like there is no real plot to The Mind there really isn’t a real ending, instead we just see the effects of what the possession has done to each of the victims.

Isaac Williams’s The Mind can be a confusing film at times with the way it just jumps around from person to person but as a whole it flows really well. Yes the film does have a 117 minute running time, but the way the film goes there really isn’t any part that seems to drag the viewer down. A viewer simply can get lost waiting to see what happens next and who kills someone next.

The deaths in The Mind aren’t really anything new; we have seen most of these deaths before. Isaac Williams lets the red stuff fly though whenever its supposed to so gore hounds will definitely dig this one even if they don’t really understand what is going on. The characters for the most part are also definitely likeable characters, you aren’t supposed to like all of them and it’s pretty obvious from the beginning which ones the viewer is supposed to support.

My only real complaint about The Mind was its lack of an ending really. The film simply just ends when the last of the possessed is discovered so we never really know why these certain six folks were even drafted by the vengeful ghost to do its dirty work. In a day when our theatres are starting to flood with franchise and polished genre films The Mind is a welcome release and I look forward to see what Isaac Williams does next.

The Mind (2009)