When he was a child, his mom went psycho & dad had no choice but to shoot a CGI hole through her head. Later, as a grown man, Alex (Christopher Denham) will again encounter evil.

In Headspace (2005), Alex suffers from horrible migraines & is developing parts of his brain normal people cannot access. Terrible things begin to happen around him; his doctor (William Atherton) will be the first to be killed by something unnatural.

Asian park queer Sammy (Patrick Wang) is next to die due to the something strange. Lloyd (James Spruill), Sammy's poopin' pal, is third to go.

Metaphysician Boris (Mark Margoles) knows of another case of a man who "awoke" & whose waking opened a portal from another reality. If two of these awakened people meet, they will link telephathically, with untold powers arising in consequence.

Alex was separated from his brother in childhood because they were dangerous in one another's proximity. But now Alex has unknowningly met his brother in the person of a loony chess genius from the park. His brother is mad from The Things He Can See (ho hum). Now that these brothers are linked, Alex has terrible power.

It's hard to make sense of the chaotic story & the main purpose of the film seems to be to kill off characters for no particular reason. The explanation, such as it is, seems to be that creatures from Alex's dreams are seeping into the world, killing the people he knows for no better reason than he knows them.

So he seeks help from a priest (Udo Kier), & a viewer just might get her hopes up the story will finally be going somewhere. Alas the priest is very quickly & monstrously killed without furthering the story one whit.

An interesting thing about the film is the mystery of how in the world such a novice director convinced so many interesting b-movie actors to be in it. It's the kind of idiot gore-flick usually populated by amateur performers who'll never be seen again. Yet this large cast is speckled with folks like Udo Kier, Sean Young, Dee Wallace-Stone, & even by gum Olivia Hussey.

Most of them seem to have been promised they'd only have to put in a few hours work for their paycheck, coming & going through the story too quickly to contribute much. But why did they even show up? Surely the script couldn't've intrigued them. Must be young van den Houten is a cutie with conviction who can charm actors. Awfully little of that conviction makes it to the screen.

The brother commits suicide before they acknowledge each other & then there's a surprise ending which might better be likened a silly ending. The side-theme of Alex's increasing intellect is foiled by the fact that he's no smarter than the guys who directed the thing & wrote the script, & that's just damned not smart.

The film is slick, well acted, & well staged for gore FX. With such poor story structure, it makes the deaths of eccentric friends & acquaintances way too pointless to possess anything like suspense. And then it just peters out with no real ending. But if you're a gore fan not satisfied by the poor production values & bad acting of most gore films, this one at least has credible actors & production values that overcome the small budge.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl