Headspace (2005)

Touches You

Admirable film.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Alex (Christopher Denham) is a young man who seems to have it all. He has an encounter with Harry (Erick Kastel), a painter and chess player, one day, and this seems to be a catalyst for what follows. Alex discovers that his intellect is now growing in leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, he's attracted some sort of otherworldly monster that goes around slaughtering people who he knows. Various characters in the medical profession try to help him out, but the strain starts to get to him.It's a pity, really. At first glance this would seem to be something fairly original for a modern fright flick. But the filmmakers don't develop the story in particularly interesting ways. While a viewer may keep watching for the sake of seeing where things are headed, the scenario is too predictable a little too often. Genre fans may be happy with the practical gore effects, such as the best effect in the movie, which actually occurs awfully early. The creatures themselves are amusingly designed, and director Andrew van den Houten makes this a very sober affair, with very little in the way of humor.You might be drawn to this one due to the big names attached: Olivia Hussey ("Black Christmas" '74), William Atherton ("Ghost Busters"), filmmaker / actor Larry Fessenden ("The Last Winter"), Dee Wallace ("The Howling"), Udo Kier ("Blood for Dracula"), Mark Margolis ('Better Call Saul'), and Sean Young ("Blade Runner"). But most of them were hired clearly just for the name value, as they get precious little to do. Atherton was also a co-producer; Hussey's daughter India Eisley and husband David Glen Eisley turn up as well. It's up to young Denham to carry the movie, which he does in a capable enough fashion."Headspace" is just entertaining enough and intriguing enough to maintain some interest, but this viewer can't help but feel that it's a classic case of wasted potential. The ending is especially unsatisfying.Six out of 10.

When I was in the first minutes of this flick i thought this was becoming a hell of a movie. Sadly after the opening credits it became one dull flick. Just the last 10 minutes were fun to watch again as a horror buff. How is it possible that a flick with such a gory opening sequence could fall into a blah blah flick were things happen off-screen. And teasing us with Udo Kier and Dee Wallace-Stone didn't save the flick either. they are only a few moments in the flick. Christopher Denham was worth mentioning, his role as Alex Borden was believable. But it was really the script that teared this into a sad boring flick. Too much of chess I saw. Even a few things that I won't spoil were predictable. The creatures also looked a bit ridiculous and the hallucinations of seeing creatures or people didn't work either. For the geeks one thing is worth seeing, a full nudity love scene that you can watch as a peeping tom. As gratuitous as it could be 'cause it added nothing to the story. Headspace is about headache, a thing i noticed after watching it.Gore 0,5/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

Prologue: Sean Young goes absolutely nuts (art imitating real life) which quickly lands her in trouble with her husband who has very little understanding for wives who suddenly start acting like blood-sucking vampires. Later on, their two sons are auctioned off to the highest foster-home bidder by their father. He senses that they aren't quite normal. Yes, one of them even wears nail-polish 15 years later. Dad was right. Weg mit dir!The beginning credits start, and then they finally end. First scene: a brilliant chess player is making money by beating everyone in sight, first an Oriental with pink nail-polish, and then Alex with black nail- polish. You can say what you want about this muddled TV/straight-to- video movie, but you can't say it isn't original: two gay guys with nail-polish playing chess one after another is a cinematic novelty. This had never been featured in any movie before.From here HP plods on, without much rhyme or reason. And yet Alex's nail-polish still doesn't wear off.To be frank, at this point (around the middle) I had to go out and get a hamburger, so I missed around 15 minutes. A mind-shattering loss to what would have been a far richer life for me, to be sure, but somehow I managed to recover from this major blow and bravely ploughed on. I just wish the movie had ploughed on as well, but it didn't. It still just plodded along. And Alex's nail-polish still wouldn't wear off.Suffice it to say Alex suffers from a mysterious condition called "increasing IQitis". This means that his intelligence grows so quickly that he can literally feel his "brain getting bigger". Sort of the opposite of what has been happening to Sean Penn since his birth.So amazingly smart is Alex supposed to be, and yet who does he go to consult? A Catholic priest. How very wise a decision. The priest gives him a Bible and tells him to pray: just the kind of advice I'd give to a stark-raving madman with a 545 IQ.The priest is played by none other than Udo Kier himself. Udo "They- hire-me-for-weird-short-roles/cameos-in-mostly rather-bad-B-movies" Kier. Udo "They-must like-my-supposedly-weird-face/persona" Kier. Kier is about as unique as an abortion sub-plot in a U.S. TV soaper. Not exactly the Second Coming of Klaus Kinski, I'm afraid…Apparently, there are not enough Catholic priests in New York (which has a sizable Italian and Latino population) so that the city has to import German ones. Udo's thick accent leads one to suggest that he'd gotten off the boat just a day earlier. Either that, or he uses the same spiffing vocal coach that Arnold Schwarzenegger has been employing (I'm not making this up). Udo loses face by appearing in this movie – if that's possible. And then he literally loses his face when a demon tears him into tiny beats.Yes, a pig-faced demon.At the end, everything ends on a tragic note, which was to be expected. Perpetually unlucky Alex arrives only minutes after his long-lost brother (older or younger? Sorry, wasn't paying that much attention, hamburger and everything…) blows his brains with a pistol. These two had last seen each other when they were around 12 and 9 respectively, and yet somehow neither had managed to recognize the other. Silly.In the last scene, Alex is tied to a bed in a lunatic asylum, while Olivia Hussey transforms into another one of those pig-nosed demons. What a cop-out ending.There was also some rather quickly/vaguely mentioned stuff about secret Soviet experiments regarding metaphysical phenomena. But the nail-polish STILL didn't wear off. Perhaps they should have just stuck Alex into your typical nu-metal boy-band and never turned this messy script into a movie

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.