Mindscape

Summary: Mindscape is a decent thriller that delivers some twists and surprises. 70/100 (B-)

A man with the ability to enter peoples' memories takes on the case of a brilliant, troubled sixteen-year-old girl to determine whether she is a sociopath or a victim of trauma. I saw some of the trailers and they were very interesting to me, however in spite of its boring trailers, I saw the movie and I really liked it. It may be predictable for some people but not to me. The premise is interesting and the cast did an awesome job during the whole film.

The entire cast is so damn talented, Taissa Farmiga (American Horror Story) and Mark Strong (Kick-Ass) did an amazing job here. Moving on, the concept is awesome and original to me but I have some issues with the script, because some of the dialog was predictable and the film becomes somewhat silly in its third act. Anyway, the most interesting elements in Mindscape are all the "visions" that the film shows us, some of them are very disturbing and strange.

The movie cares about its characters and their previous story. In addition, all of these characters are very well developed. I actually felt sorry for Anna's character, her story is quite sad; also, Taissa Farmiga does an excellent job performing Anna's role. Moving on, the film keeps you guessing the whole time and I liked that; you don't trust in some of these characters and you don't know if Anna is crazy or she's just an innocent girl.

It is entertaining and it makes sense. Another thing that I like about it is the ending, Mindscape ended up being entertaining, interesting, different, well filmed and superbly acted; in spite of some weak dialog and a messy final act. Its final act has its ups and downs, but the last 5 minutes are quite good, the ending is perfect and well done. I also loved the art design of the end credits. I think that it deserves at least a 7/10 rating, it's a very underrated flick. (B-)

Based on the reviews of this movie that I read on this site, I went into this film with high hopes. 90 minutes later,I was truly perplexed as to what all the buzz was about. Maybe films today are so bad that even "average" rates as "very good"? Well, I don't know, and while the film was not a total waste of time, it had little to offer,and was not as half as interesting as the reviews had lead me to believe it would be. The good: The beginning of the movie is very well set up: the movie takes place in the not too distant future where there are people who have the ability to recover and view the memories of others. The protagonist of the movie is a broken down memory reader in need of money and so he goes back to his old employer in search of a job.He is given a "simple" assignment: get a very precocious teenager to eat. But said teenager is *very* smart and not what she appears to be... Both the male lead (the returning memory recovery expert) and female lead ("Anna",the teenager) are played very well. The bad: Very convoluted plot, which devised to make the movie intriguing,in the end was a little over the top and maybe too clever for its own good. The ugly: The ending. Much ado about nothing. I was surprised that after all the complex twists and turns in the move it all came down to (what was in my opinion) an ending that is simple but unfortunately didn't really make much sense.

Anna, or Mindscape as the original title goes, rides heavily on the presence and acting capabilities of its two main leads, Mark Strong as John, a psychologist with mind reading abilities, and Taissa Farmiga as Anna, his young and eerily disturbed patient. The film itself revolves around the idea that certain humans have developed their latent psychic abilities to such a degree that they can read the minds of others and thus help them overcome traumas and illnesses of the mind. Yeah, it's a bit Inception-esque, but it's different enough in style and atmosphere that you won't mind.

Still, the best part about this film is Mark Strong. His quiet dignified performance holds almost all of the scenes together and his interactions with Farmiga are very interesting to witness. Farmiga's performance suffers a touch from her relative inexperience, at least compared to Strong. You can definitely tell that she's acting in the earlier scenes, but she gets better quickly and her character as a whole nails the eery wonder child trope.

Plot-wise the film is nothing special, being relatively easy to predict and offering no real twists, but it's more of a moodpiece in any case. I would have liked for the actual mindscape scenes to be a bit more creative and the story as a whole to be a bit more overreaching in scope, but those lacks only mean that the film is merely good instead of great.

Mindscape is worth a watch if you're looking for a thriller with a more thoughtful tone and lacking in excessive brutality and gore.

Why are all the English actors doing American accents? It's really throwing me off. I feel like they needed to dub Anna's mother's voice in after editing. It's all very bizarre.

This movie has a 6.4 rating as of May 2014 which is slightly too low I think. I give it a 7.5 out of 10. I have noticed that thrillers, unless they are great thrillers like The Usual Suspects etc.. are scored very low because of two reasons. Firstly thrillers are general slow paced at first and build suspense and tension. Some people lose interest quickly. Secondly, some people just don't get it. Due to the audience not following the dynamics of the thriller they score it low.

The title Anna is a better title than Mindscape in my opinion because the story is a personal story about the character Anna and the main character's memory of his past love also named Anna.

The main concept of Anna is not original and there are little things in the movies that require you to suspend belief etc etc etc...like all movies it is not perfect...but I really enjoyed the movie..I think the acting was great from Mark Strong and the support cast..I didn't know that the young girl, played by Taissa Farmiga, is the younger sister of Vera Farmiga. She is excellent.

I think the story was predictable and I would have done something slightly different to make it less predictable but I can't explain further without spoiling. Having said that I still really enjoyed the movie. It is much better than most thrillers out there, some with much bigger budgets.

Some reviewers have posted on the message board that they didn't like the details..I loved the details, this is what elevates the movie above most..it may not always be believable but Hey! we are watching a movie about a guy who can enter peoples memories, what was everyone expecting...

It is a really interesting thriller that is well acted and despite being predictable it has a very clever plot versus underlying plot script...I recommend it above the majority of thrillers out there....great work!