Mindflesh (2008)
Distributor: 4Digital Media
DVD Release Date (UK): 24th January 2011
Directed by: Robert Pratten
Starring: Peter Bramhill, Carole Derrien, Lucy Liemann, Chris Fairbank
Review by: Ben Bussey
Taxi drivers: are they ever just down to earth, emotionally stable people? It would seem not. In the crazy cabbie sweepstakes, would-be novelist Chris Jackson (Peter Bramhill) may not be quite on a par with Travis Bickle, but he’s got his share of demons. Only in his case, it may be that his demons are literally that. He is plagued by visions of an enigmatic, ethereal woman, which might not be so bad were it not that these episodes tend to be followed by savage attacks from monstrous entities which almost defy description. Naturally, everyone close to Chris thinks he’s losing his marbles, but what they don’t know is that they too are in danger from these otherwordly beings. By somehow believing his dream woman into physical existence, Chris has inadvertently opened a door that will lead to those close to him seeing their own obsessions made flesh; and the results will not be pretty.
At one point Chris’s ex-girlfriend Tessa (Lucy Liemann) makes a remark about how everything we experience is a reflection of our own minds, which reminded me of something Alan Moore wrote in From Hell: “the one place Gods inarguably exist is in our minds where they are real beyond refute, in all their grandeur and monstrosity.” The notion of human imagination as a plane of existence that is just as ‘real’ as our physical universe is, to me, a truly compelling idea; indeed, Moore went on to use it as the basis for Promethea, one of my favourite comics ever. But of course, as fascinating as such mystical concepts are, they have not always translated too easily to film. Sad to say, this is largely the case with Mindflesh. Adapted by director Robert Pratten from the novel White Light by William Scheinman (nope, me neither), Mindflesh makes a good effort at presenting a vision of paranormal experience, with echoes of David Cronenberg, Clive Barker and Ken Russell. Unfortunately, while there are some interesting ideas at play, they tend to be somewhat lost amidst a plot that never quite works, and central performances that never quite convince.
In fairness though, it’s not so much an issue of failings on the part of the director or actors as it is an overall issue with tone. Mindflesh takes large-scale metaphysical ideas and situates them in a small-scale metropolitan setting, on a clearly low budget. The core concept alone naturally demands a bit of the old suspension of disbelief, so it doesn’t help when other aspects strain credibility. For one, it’s hard to swallow that someone going through this kind of experience would freely share the information, yet Chris seems to openly tell everyone he knows about his visions. The various subplots that revolve around his friends are largely disinteresting and of little overall importance to the narrative, such as a friend who thinks his wife is cheating on him, and a police officer with a somewhat unhealthy taste for masturbating over crime scene photographs. As evidenced by this latter case, there is a slightly annoying tendency toward shock tactics which, again, do not serve the narrative in any particularly notable way.
There’s also quite a lot of sex going on, with the entity dubbed a Goddess (Carole Derrien) being partially clad or fully naked for the duration and spending a good portion of her scenes screwing Chris’s brains out, all the while never uttering 
a single line of dialogue. (A lesser man might make some crack about her being the perfect woman.) Add to this the monsters which are somewhere between Cronenberg and Lovecraft, and we could almost be watching a particularly bizarre (and unusually British) episode of True Blood, but for one key attribute Mindflesh lacks: humour. The film is at pains to play things as straight as possible, and when the premise is so outlandish taking such a po-faced approach only serves to make the whole enterprise harder to take seriously. The only exception to this comes in the form of Chris Fairbanks, whose small role as a parapsychologist (i.e. exposition guy) is played to hilariously theatrical excess, finally allowing the viewer a little release from the otherwise relentlessly dour atmosphere.
It may aspire to be an Altered States for the 21st century, but sadly it falls midway between that and a new generation Lifeforce. Mindflesh may have some good ideas and good intentions, but when all is said and done it fails to do them justice. The end result is a film which may have some value as a curiosity, but is a bit of a let-down.