Joe Begos (Almost Human) is back with a funnier/tighter/smarter/bloodier MIND'S EYE

Oh, yeah -- and it's a lot campier, too. TrustMovies was not much a fan of Joe Begos' earlier work, Almost Human, released in winter 2014 and dealing with an extraterrestrial kidnapping/returning that leads to a near-continuous slasher-movie massacre, so he is happy to report that he enjoyed Begos' latest film a lot more. THE MIND'S EYE involves telekinesis, which appears to be a subject that this writer/director (shown below) can have some fun with, while being a bit more creative and still get to those juicy/bloody/gory parts he clearly loves so much.

Our hero (this time, as last) is played by Graham Skipper (shown below, right), an actor of somewhat protuberant eyes, who pops them and bugs them almost consistently throughout the film. He undoubtedly was asked to do so by his director, as was his leading lady, Lauren Ashley Carter (below, left) because this eye-bugging is how all the telekinesis takes place. Time and again throughout the film, actors bug their eyes and pop their neck veins as their characters attempt to levitate and/or move everything from guns and furniture to hypodermic needles and a very nasty ax.

Trust me: you will not have seen so much eye-rolling and -popping since the last time you watched a silent movie -- and I think you'll agree that, even then, The Mind's Eye beats out those "silents" by a mile. And because it turns out that just about every character in the film is capable of this telekinesis, there is an awful lot of eye-popping going on.

Our hero (above), however, turns out to be almost the best of the bunch (think of him as a kind of hairy Carrie), although his girlfriend (below) nearly matches him by exploding a bad guy's head. Of course, all this take so much pain and intensity that you can expect to see lots of blood oozing from the telekinetics' various orifices.

Mr. Begos has managed to provide a more interesting screenplay, plot and even better dialog this time around, and so ropes us into his tale of a supposedly government-sponsored "home" for telekinetics run by a power-hungry nut case (John Speredakos, below) who goes from a cajoling nice-guy to a Freddy Krueger-style villain in no time flat. Also in the cast is the always-game Larry Fessenden, playing our hero's helpful police-officer father.

As the eyes pop and the blood flows, so, too, do the laughs grow louder and more frequent. I would like to think that this was part of Mr Begos' initial plan, and that he does not take himself or his movie all that seriously. The Mind's Eye is finally good, silly, noisy, campy fun. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

From RLJ Entertainment and running a blessedly short 87 minutes, the movie opens this coming Friday, August 5, simultaneously in theaters (a very limited release, I would assume), on iTunes and via VOD -- with a Blu-ray disc release scheduled for Tuesday, October 4, 

Horror returns home in Joe Begos' super-low-budget trifle, ALMOST HUMAN

Rhode Island stands in for Maine, not that most viewers will care or notice, in ALMOST HUMAN, the new horror/slasher/sci-fi debut of filmmaker Joe Begos, who has here concocted yet another variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers that, of course, cannot begin to top the calm creepiness of Don Siegel's brilliant original. As both writer and director, Mr. Begos -- shown two photos below and looking barely out of middle school -- seems more interested in using what little special effects budget he had toward bright blue lights, loud

sound effects and visual electricity outages, as we see one character, a fellow named Mark (rotund actor Josh Ethier, who looks as if he might do comedy rather well), swept up into the sky in the middle of all that cacophony and icy blue shine.

Suddenly it's something like two years later, and one day a couple of hunters in the woods come upon Mark's naked body, encrusted in a kind of gelatinous goo (and the most interesting of all the various special effects we'll see in this movie). Mark has returned, it seems, except he is not quite himself, quickly and gorily dispatching those hunters and then anyone else he comes upon during his journey back home. Yes, Mark is the title character here, as are some others whom he changes along his merry, bloody way.

Begos uses his special-effects money in this section toward all gore, all the time, which grows a little tired rather quickly. Toward the end of his barely-80-minute movie, however, he comes up with some more interesting semi-creature effects which, though we've seen their like elsewhere, at least provide a respite from the blood-letting.

In the meantime, characters such as our hero, Seth, played at max speed with eyes a-popping pretty constantly by Graham Skipper (above) and our heroine Jen, (Vanessa Leigh, below), try to outrun, outgun and outwit our new resident alien.

In addition to the gore, there's some real tension here, a little humor, and an occasional surprise, and one can indeed marvel at Begos' ability to put it all together relatively effectively. Still one questions some little things: Why does Seth need to possess ESP (this is totally irrelevant to anything else and is used only to ratchet up some fake suspense). And how do you "hurt" these new beings? (Mark is shot in the head, knifed and then gets an axe in his back to no avail, but a little later his hand gets hurt and suddenly he grows awfully weak.)

So Almost Human remains pretty much a been-there, done-that exercise that, one hopes, will lead to some more interesting films from Begos down the road apace. The movie, from IFC Midnight, was supposed to have opened theatrically this Friday, February 21, in New York City and Los Angeles at the very special little Arena Cinema.  Update: The film will indeed open at the Arena, as planned at the same time as it receives a VOD release -- but I've just been informed that Almost Human will not open in New York City until Wednesday, February 26, here at the IFC Center. So if this one sounds appealing to my New York readers, stick it on your list for next week.