Mindscape

This is a highly suspenseful and cerebral mystery , filled with red herrings , twists and turns . This is a thrilling Spain/Britain co-production being well paced , intriguing and skillfully made . It is an agreeable if overly familiar story about a "memory detective" charged with rummaging through the repressed recall of a troubled young woman accused of a terrible crime . The producer/director Jaume Collet-Serra who made successes such as Orphan, Unknown, Non-Stop brings us another stirring picture , ¨Mindscape¨ or ¨Anna¨. Exciting and moving picture with a complex intrigue , nice character studio , suspense , a lot of killings and full of flashbacks with a peculiar spectator : the same protagonist John/Mark Strong . As its deals with John, a mind detective (Mark Strong, in his first leading role in a feature film), plays paid to enter people's memories and uncover the reality behind their alleged crimes . As John enters her mind and becomes more involved in her sometimes brutal memories , he must decide if she is indeed the victim of unspeakable trauma or a very clever and manipulative sociopath . With a combination of hand-holding and a little bit of coaxing he can enter a person's memories, whether they be formative or traumatic, and while he can't interact with them his observations reveal information that can be used later in therapy or criminal trials . Due to a traumatizing event in his past that ends up coming back to haunt him, and ultimately negatively affecting a session . But what will he make of his new assignment, the brilliant but troubled teenager Anna ? (Taissa Farmiga as Anna, as the picture is known here in the States, is called by its original title of Mindscape) .

Jorge Dorado's brain-twisting horror-thriller , from the beginning, the film keeps the audience interested, hooking you immediately with a strong start . The film contains tension , thriller , drama , mystery and plot twists , including decent suspense with tense sequences especially in its final part , in a unexpected denouement , near of the end . Decent thriller in which nothing is the way it seems , the atmosphere is already tense and the twists and turns are the best part of this movie . Hitchcock-style psychological thriller , being surprisingly realized and compellingly designed ; however this efficient production no match for a forgettable screenplay. There is something riveting about the concept of a person with the ability to get into another person's mind, with also having the ability to experience their memories , as the film is an experience, full of the thrill of a universe that involves memory detective agencies . The original as well as entertaining idea is overspread throughout the movie , but not totally satisfactory , including conventional pitfalls and the flick attempts to get you in the mood for some memory-scouring detective work . Mindscape is a suspenseful horror with a fantastic twist , though also packs some flaws and gaps . The motion picture is pretty well , although sometimes stagy and packs excessive turns ; however is entertaining for continuous suspense . The story is narrated by means of flashbacks about past and present , realizing a complex as well as interesting crossover . The film was noteworthy for casting some of the finest actors in England . Nice acting by Mark Strong as a memory detective with the ability to assist in solving crimes by getting into the minds of witnesses . Anna is played with effortless panache by one of America's best upcoming talents - "American Horror Story's" Taissa Farmiga . Very good support cast gives good acting such as Brian Cox , Albert Amman, Indira Varma , Saskia Reeves , Antonia Clarke , Richard Dillane and Noah Taylor . Sinister and mysterious atmosphere including a colorful cinematography , as it is finely photographed by cameraman Oscar Faura . Suspenseful and stirring musical score Lucas Vidal

The film was well produced by various producers ,Jaume Collet-Serra , Maria Contreras , Tom Drumm ,M.A. Faura , Mercedes Gamero ,Nathalie Marciano , Peter Safran and Juan Sola , all of them have produced a lot of successes in the new Spanish/British cinema . Being professionally directed by Jorge Dorado . The movie will appeal to suspense buffs and Mark Strong/Taissa Farmiga fans . Rating : 6 ; acceptable and passable . It's well worth watching and contains some really thrilling scenes and suspenseful images .

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.

I need to stop reading IMDb reviews for this type of movie. I skipped all the ones who had possible spoiler alerts, but everyone else saying you had figured it out before he did, and the last 20 minutes are useless and so forth did jade me. And reading the reviews did a funny thing, I thought I knew exactly what was going on and I was wrong. So I guess reading the reviews gave me the wrong ideas. Which was actually quite funny because I kept waiting for my version to come down and it never did. So I missed the obvious because I was sure that was not the story. Okay the movie was enjoyable. It was well done. It was a fun thriller/mystery. I thought the acting was good. I liked the concept, and I think I may of really liked it better if I did not read the reviews first. It is not sci fi at all, just the idea of going into someones memories is a cool concept, but the movie was a straight up mystery/thriller. Just watch it and enjoy it with a bag of popcorn and have fun!

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!

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-)