HEADSPACE

HEADSPACE

Ah, children's birthday parties. I might not have kids, but I gather that they can be fraught times for parents – all those potential hitches, histrionics and disappointments. Well, it seems some kids' parties are more fraught with difficulties than others, as the surreal-toned opening scenes of Headspace (2005) show us. What should be for a little boy called Alex a nice garden party with birthday cake quickly goes awry, resulting in an early gory scene which certainly grabs the attention – but somewhat belies the (largely) psychological horror of the rest of this movie.

We're moved on, through credits which have some jaw-dropping artwork to accompany them, to Alex's early adulthood. A mild-mannered young man, we meet him drifting casually along the city streets, and stopping to play a game of chess with a self-assured stranger before heading back to the apartment he's house-sitting. Almost as soon as we meet him, though, we see that he's privy to agonising headaches, some of which knock him out cold. There are flashbacks, too, and enough of these that you start to wonder just what has happened in the interim between that fateful birthday party and the present; there are always as many questions for the audience as for Alex, throughout the film. These headaches escalate rapidly, as does – so Alex tells a friend, then a concerned medical staff – his cognitive abilities. All of a sudden he can read a book in minutes, and outstrips all the expectations of memory and problem-solving held by his doctor.

Naturally Alex is scared, and seeks further help to understand what is happening to him. To find out, he has to piece things together with the help of people both from his past and his present. The result is an unsettling experience which refuses to tie things up neatly...

The first thing to say is that, when I saw the blue-filtered first scene, I felt nervous. Few visual tics are more overused today than the 'everything looks cold and grainy' motif...so I was pleased when this lifted, almost as soon as I'd noticed it, and the film became a richly-coloured and atmospheric affair. And, to be fair, Headspace can boast heaps of atmosphere, regardless of the clean, urban spaces most of the movie takes place in. At its best, it understands that less is more – a glimpse of something here, a sound there, and this is more than enough to establish mood. The more overt horror scenes are more of a mixed bag – indeed, they're always a risk – and at their best when you don't get to see anything sinister too clearly. When things are a bit clearer, they look weaker, even derivative, and the film could have done away with several of its SFX-laden scenes quite comfortably; perhaps it's studio pressure which insists on saleable gore (and saleable sex, as there are a couple of sex scenes in here which are needless even by low-budget horror standards, and treated rather comically, perhaps because they didn't belong in the screenplay in the first place.) Whatever the rationale, Headspace is at its best when it stays ambiguous.

At the core of the film's ability to maintain audience interest is the performance of adult Alex, played by Christopher Denham in his first starring role – he went on to star in Shutter Island, so it seems he's reprised the ol' psychological horror elsewhere and made a good job of it. A fragile character, Alex is intriguing to watch, and you feel for his struggle to make sense of the world. Although the exposition is drastically different, I was put in mind of Jacob's Ladder by Denham's role and performance here – that same sense of character-centred cerebral weirdness, someone desperately trying to understand what is happening to them. Christopher Denham is joined by a cast of cult film stars: many of these are cameo roles, but when they include the likes of Udo Kier (a man who never phones in a performance) and Sean Young (who seems ageless, yet in a refreshingly non-Botoxed way) then you'll enjoy waiting for them nonetheless. They're joined by the lovely Olivia Hussey, too, who plays a somewhat left-field psychotherapist, and the oft-nude Pollyanna 'The Woman' Macintosh.

Sure, there are some lulls, a few clichés, and a few mistakes, but Headspace is overall an entertaining headfuck made all the more engaging by the fact that it has, at its core, an element of tragedy. Director Andrew van den Houten has since gone on to produce much more overtly horrific fare, so this is a nice opportunity to see how he handles mood.

The DVD release comes in at 84 minutes and has an aspect ratio of 1:78, with the usual audio options. There is a raft of extras: a Making of featurette, filmmakers' commentaries, a retrospective featurette, deleted, extended and alternate scenes, audition videos, an SFX journal and some trailers too.

Review by Keri O’Shea


 
Released by Moderncine
Region 1 - NTSC
Not Rated
Extras :
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