MK Ultra

I like the lead actor that plays the doctor; this was a gimmick and I feel for it.

This is not just low budget. You can do a lot with a short changed budget. Even in the opening; there should not have just been a 1:1 old video playing. There were no effects used; not even a ken burns effect or something. The CIA guy has huge nose hairs coming up from pretending to snort cocaine. This is super obvious against a light colored background. NOBODY looked at this film after it was put in the can. The lighting is terrible in every indoor scene and the shadows are not managed at all.

FIFTEEN MINUTES IN... I had to hit the ejector button. I am not going to waste my time watching a movie that was not worth a second look to the people that made the dang thing.

In the 60's, the CIA is conducting mind control experiments using LSD. Dr. Ford Strauss (Anson Mount) is recruited by CIA agent Galvin Morgan (Jason Patric) to run experiments at a small Mississippi clinic. Rose (Jaime Ray Newman) is Ford's wife.

The style is faux documentary. It doesn't have much of a story flow. It's basically a lot of individual scenes of Ford's life and his experiments. It's trying for realism. There are a few interesting ideas and scenes. The transgender patient is most interesting. Mostly, it's rather dull until the last act explodes into gun violence. Through that whole section, I am most intrigued by Anson Mount and Jason Patric's similar looks. That's not a good thing. I don't find their struggle that compelling.

At first, I embraced the dry dialog, noir-esque filming style and inconsistent audio as a style choice in trying to make this film seem like it was made in the era of MK Ultra. But as the movie progressed (or should I say plodded along), I realized that there was little to hold on to. Many of the actors in this film were fantastic but were given very little to work with script-wise. The editing of the film, particularly in the final scenes, seemed very disjointed and not as an artistic choice. The addition of historical footage (documentaries, interviews etc) was great but tended to be stretched too long, making things drag along. While many complain about the film being more about the main doctor than MK Ultra, that is not my issue. It was just a poorly assembled film as a whole, despite having so many great components. For a fascinating subject, this film felt like a cinematic lobotomy. Wanted to like it but I just can't.

MK Ultra was a top secret US government program to test mind control techniques on people.

The words secret and test are the key there.

Lots of the MK Ultra program was voluntary (still kind of appalling), but this film focuses on something that always happens when you make things secret and throw money at it. You get abuses by the type of person attracted to acting out their worst fantasies.

Without giving away spoilers, the Dr Strauss (Anson Mount) is genuine in his desire to research whether LSD can help those with mental illness, addictions etc. He struggles to get funding. A benefactor shows up and Strauss slowly begins to realise his mistake.

Thankfully the film relies on showing not telling. It lets you try to work out what's happening. The result is an intense, grubby and depressing look at the darker parts of the MK Ultra story.

One criticism is that the beginning has a scene linking the program to race. The rest of the film is obvious that it wasn't about race. No-one was spared - MK Ultra even preyed on their own CIA agents. The scene was a cheap addition and the film is better than that. Also, the film kind of skips over the role Doctors played in the outright abuses of MK Ultra. The doctor here tries to correct his mistake. The real ones were quite happy to benefit.

Just like many of the worst excesses in human history, doctors (who should know better) involved themselves in the MK Ultra abuses in full knowledge of what was being done.

Should you watch it? Yes. While you're at it... look up the facts of MK Ultra. It's not a conspiracy theory. Lots of conspiracy nonsense was built around it, but the program itself and the abuses that went along with it were very real.

I like Anson Mount, as well as Jason Patrick (which, BTW, I didn't recognize until I looked at the cast). The subject is also one that has enormous significance: CIA special programs to experiment with LSD and other substances in order to break the human will and make tools out of people. The acting was good, too, from all of the people involved. The problem was the plot, going from creepy to boring and back again without an actual reason. And if that wasn't confusing enough, it was interlaced with old documentary footage.

In the end, it felt like the movie did not know what it wanted to be: a thriller, a horror, a drama, a documentary. I didn't dislike the film, but I wouldn't recommend it.