The other day, I got a bit of an early birthday present in the form of a package from the kind folks at Mill Creek Entertainment. It was filled with a variety of films and I was in pure ecstasy looking through all the titles to watch a review. Mill Creek Entertainment really outdid themselves and I want to thank them yet again for the kind support they have given my blog since it’s inception. Now, it’s my task to watch and review the movies and I thought I would start my reviews off with a film I had never heard of before, “Mindwarp”. I admit that I mainly picked this movie first because it starred one of my favorite actors, Bruce Campbell.
In the year 2037, the Earth is mainly a wasteland and the population is split up between normal and healthy people living in a sealed biosphere and mutated cannibals who live outside the protection of the biosphere. The “dreamers” living in the biosphere are plugged into a virtual reality in which all their dreams can come true. The main character Judy ends up exiled from the biosphere after interfering with other people’s realities and is cast outside. Once on the surface, she is saved by Stover from a group of cannibals. Together, the two must manage to find a way to survive this apocalyptic Earth.
I have a lot of thoughts about this movie and I am not sure where to start. For starters, this movie feels very much like an early version of “The Matrix”. Humans plug into virtual reality and the “real world” is a wasteland. I can’t help but feel like the Wachowski brothers got some inspiration from this movie. Now, don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean “The Matrix” didn’t expand and improve on the concept, but “Mindwarp” did it first.
The film had an early made for the sci-fi channel feeling to it. The film was the first movie produced by Fangoria Films. As you might imagine, it was very low budget as a result. It is very much a B movie but it also seemingly embraces the fact it’s a bit of a schlock fest. I also have to give it extra credit for being filmed in Michigan (home boy has to represent and all that jazz).
The film stars Marta Martin as Judy and she does the best she can with what she is given. Bruce Campbell, who is given top billing, co-stars as Stover. This is Bruce Campbell at his prime, “Army of Darkness” and “The Adventures of Brisco Country Jr.” era. What I love about Campbell is how he fully commits to even the most over the top performances. He does his best in this film but his character isn’t given much time to breath or react to things. Lastly, horror icon Angus Scrimm portrays the leader of the cannibals (and the source of a few twists in the film). Honestly, Scrimm was the highlight of the film but isn’t introduced until the third act.
Now, I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t go into how the budget effected the film. There was a part in the film that actually sort of made me mad because Judy talked about creating a world and riding on dinosaurs, all things more interesting than what was depicted in the movie. To me, that dialogue is almost calling attention to the lack of a budget. While the first act reminded me of “The Matrix”, the second and third acts reminded me of “Mad Max”...on a budget. Seriously, there was a part where one of the cannibals had a hubcap as a breastplate. That is the sort of costume me and my friends would wear as kids when we made home movies.
So, I have danced around the issue of how I felt about the movie overall and it’s hard to get into it without getting in to spoilers. To me, it felt like a short film stretched out to feature length. There were some interesting concepts but it had boring parts and there clearly wasn’t a budget for properly done film. The film picked up steam going into the third act but the final few minutes not only ruined the third act, but it also ruined the movie as a whole. This is a movie that tried to have way too many twists and all those twists just ended up undermining everything that came before it. That being said, I am sure M. Night Shyamalan loved everything about this movie.
So how do you rate a movie that you feel botched it’s ending? I really didn’t mind the movie until the end, sure it was cheap looking and a little goofy, but it also owned that for the most part. I think the movie was trying too hard to give an ending that would be talked about in hopes of elevating the film. In my opinion, it lost sight of what it might have been destined to become. “Mindwarp” could have easily become a cult classic, and one can make an argument it is, but it will never be as fondly remembered as it could have been.
Grade: C
