Headspace

HEADSPACE is about Alex (Christopher Denham), a young man who has somehow opened a gateway to an alternate dimension causing it to bleed into this reality. Unfortunately, some murderous demons have also crossed over in the process. Either that, or Alex is losing his mind.

This movie has a heavy, grim atmosphere of gloom throughout, including Alex's childhood, where he and his brother witness their mother (Sean Young) mentally disintegrate.

This is an exceptionally bleak horror film.

Co-stars Dee Wallace, Olivia Hussey, Larry Fessenden, and William Atherton. Also watch for Pollyanna McIntosh in her debut role...

Where do I start...??? Very simply: Decent concept that could have been very intriguing EXCELLENT beginning to set the pace of the film I really like chess, so I thought that would be a neat added element to the film... GEEEEEEEEZ...

TOTALLY disintegrates into an EXTREMELY poorly written, directed, and acted film. PERIOD.

Very sad too; I REALLY, REALLY wish I had read more of the comments and especially the message board MUCH more carefully. Usually I do, but I musta REALLY screwed up on this one : ) I can excuse a film completely for being aimless and even pointless, ***IF*** it at least has style, mood, and is done with SOME bloody competence. It is SO dang funny how some of these film makers snag a bunch of these 'B' actors whom we'd immediately recognize and then they have a combined screen time of about 8 minutes. When will I learn... I felt sorry for Sean Young; she had all of, what..., 3 minutes. Sad...

Anyway, by the end, if you have ANY vestige of intelligence left (which is bloody unlikely) this is one of those cases where you will TRULY be sitting there stunned wondering what the HELL you just did with the last 90 minutes or so...

I'm serious here. Believe me on this one...

I'm not normally hateful or unforgiving when it comes to film and Especially the 'Horror' genre, honestly. But this one fails on almost EVERY level.

Headspace Independent film has changed so radically in the last fifteen years that it's almost impossible in most cases these days to get a feel for the raw power that independent cinema once provided. HEADSPACE has got that rawness, but with the sense of professional productions values that usually only a large studio can provide. And in a decade of useless sequels and remakes of the classics of horror, this movie is a welcome breath of fresh air to the ailing genre.

From the very beginning, in a menace-laced prologue of a seemingly insane mother (played by Sean Young) going on a rampage against her husband (played by actor/director Larry Fessendan) and two sons, it taps into the sense of unease associated with familial secrets. Admittedly, the prologue is a bit of a red herring, but does add to the overall tone of the film, so its obvious misdirection can be forgiven.

After a nastily sodden matriarchal death, we flash ahead to contemporary NYC as a young man sits for a chess game with a sardonic older man in the park. This is our first clue that there might be a connection between Alex (played by stage actor Christopher Denham) and Harry (played by a brilliant talent, Erick Kastel) about which we know nothing.

Later Alex seeks help from doctors (played by Dee Wallace Stone and William Atherton) about his agonizing headaches and his sudden ability to speed read and know secrets about people he's never met before.

The mystery deepens when we find out that Alex sees demons in his nightmares…and they're soon coming through to the real world.

Enough said, or else we might spoil the experience of viewing this excellent film.

The strengths of HEADSPACE far outweigh the weaknesses, but while I'm discussing them…let me say it does suffer a bit from the MTV sickness. You know what I mean, right? You know…those video montage flash-cut editing tricks. I've always found them annoying. It does nothing for the narrative in most cases, and tends only to call attention to the director, not the story. It's when HEADSPACE loses these childish pretensions of mock style that it becomes a truly good horror movie.

The musical score keeps a surprising balance and unity to the narrative, blending seamlessly into the background, despite the jarring rock music thrown in as an afterthought. Without the rock music montages this might have been one of the most perfectly constructed musical scores for a horror film since THE SIXTH SENSE. It was subtle and winding, like a Harold Budd/Brian Eno album for film.

And I don't usually commend an editor because I feel the less conscious we are of the editing the better the editor has done his/her job. But I've got to give some kudos to Elwaldo Baptiste for his condensed style of editing, especially when it comes to trying to fill in all the background we need for the story. It couldn't have been an easy task to get two movies worth of stuff in an hour and half film. But this came off pretty well in the end product.

The special effects are real, folks. No freakin' overused watery CGI crap here. Used sparingly, but to great effect to the end product, I found the only letdown was actually seeing the creatures full on. They suffered a bit from the rubber suit syndrome. But still it does work very well up to that point. Creepy cinematography helps keep them in shadow and just out of focus.

There's a complexity to the story that the packaging belies. Trust me. Don't go by the pathetic synopsis that the packaging provides, or else you're never going to watch this film. And any horror fan should definitely see this. It's not a prefect movie by far--what with the scattered midstream story, the frustrating red herrings tossed in as an attempt to obfuscate an already convoluted narrative, and the useless sex scene thrown in for those who can't seem to find a true demarcation between horror and sexual taboos. But if you can set those minors flaws aside, you'll find a diamond in the rough with HEADSPACE. I'm definitely going to be looking for more from Andrew van den Houten in the future. I think if he can get a few more years of film-making under his belt, he might have something powerful to say in this genre.

--Nickolas Cook

I first became aware of the film Headspace back in early 2006 after reading a featured article in Fangoria, one of my favorite horror mags. The article was interesting, as they usually are, but what enticed me most about this little, independent gem was the insanely original storyline, which we'll get to shortly. I was also attracted to the filmmakers themselves and the producers, writer and director all seemed very self motivated, intelligent and determined to make an awesome film. So, you could say I was expecting a little more than usual going into Headspace.

Let me fill you in on the plot. We see a young, troubled guy known to the world as Alex Borden, played by Christopher Denham. By troubled, I mean a pretty rough childhood which, at one point, involves him and his brother viewing their dad blow their mom's face to smithereens with a shotgun. Serves her right for getting too far away from the kitchen… Alex has been a smart guy all his life but, at the age of twenty-five, his intelligence begins increasing by the minute. This dude reads books in minutes, learns how to master chess in a day's time and can even understand women. Actually, I'm kidding… Nobody's that smart. Eventually, Alex learns that he can see events that have taken place in the past and, towards the end of the film, can even see into other dimensions, which is where the crap really hits the fan.

This Good Will Hunting Gone Wild tale could have easily been a disaster if it were not for the TLC given by the people involved. The look of the film really enhanced the quality for me. Headspace looks like it cost five to ten million to make and I would bet my dead rabbit Penny's water bottle that the budget was nowhere near that amount. Headpsace recently took home the Best Cinematography Award at the New York Horror Film Festival and with good reason. The film is colorful, shot well and looks magnificent over all.

Another element that boosted the quality of the film for me was the casting. It seemed like every five minutes, some blast from the past was popping up. We have Olivia Hussey from Black Christmas, William Atherton from Ghostbusters, Sean Young from Bladerunner and Dee Wallace-Stone from The Hills Have Eyes. I could keep going but I think you get the idea. These seasoned vets not only make the film more fun because of that, "Oh I remember them!" factor but, they also bring some serious acting chops to the table. Newcomer Christopher Denham definitely holds his own as well and he's interesting to watch as he manages to find a balance between the nice guy next-door and the freak with the expanding brain. I mean, I liked the guy throughout the entire movie but I wasn't sure if someone should spend time scouring the Earth for the best doctor available or just drag him in the back yard behind the shed and put him down Ol' Yeller style! It was a nice dynamic.

With all this being said, the bottom line is that I really respect the filmmakers of Headspace for truly caring about the material. They set out to make one of those B rated monster movies that we all remember as kids and they nailed it. It was like watching USA's Creature Double Feature night with the only difference being that it was Tuesday and there was only one featured Creature Feature as apposed to two featured Double Creature Features. Huh? Anyway, those films were never this well done. Bravo!

Overall, I really enjoyed Headspace and feel very comfortable recommending it to everyone, even the casual fans of the genre. One thing to the gore lovers though; these characters spend a lot more time talking than chopping so, if you're looking for a blood bath, try something else. I highly suggest watching the film in the dark on a Saturday night with a big fat bowl of popped corn floating in butter. It's that kind of film!

Imagine thinking this was a deep, intelligent film. What a world these reviewers must live in. OOOOH IT'S ABOUT INTELLIGENCE AND IT HAS A BUNCH OF COMPLETELY NONSENSICAL, UNEXPLAINED SCENES THAT ARE LEFT UP TO YOUR IMAGINATION SO IT MUST BE DEEP AND METAPHORICAL AND I MUST BE CLEVER SINCE I LIKE IT! No, dudes, that's not how it works (and don't think that no one's noticed that no one here talking about how clever this movie is can even slightly explain what exactly they think is clever about this movie or what the actual plot is).

This isn't some clever psychological thriller where all the strange things we see are just in the main character's head. We are directly shown over and over again that the monster literally exists and that unexplained supernatural things are occurring for other characters when the main character isn't around. This is just a cheap monster movie, and not even a good one.

It's just your everyday, generic time-waster of a budget horror film. Awful, annoying characters sit around talking for the majority of the film padding out the run time and every once and a while someone gets killed off camera with just a brief glimpse of a rubber monster hand. Movies like this are a dime a dozen. Just another forgettable 3/10.