Made for Syfy Channel movies are extremely hit or miss, and Mind Blown is sitting incredibly comfortably in the latter column. The concept is perfectly sound, and right up my alley, however the execution is exactly as you’d expect in a made for television package, except with efx from a decade ago and a worse script.
A group of highly powered telekinetics are brought together seemingly to hone their powers to be used for the good of humanity, but when it becomes evident that Project Mind Blown (ugh…) isn’t what it said on the tin one of these TKs goes rogue in a race against time for… something or other.
I’m actually not quite sure what the plot is, as I got sick of jumping from plot-hole to plot-hole while avoiding screaming inconsistencies early on. I could tell the good guys from the bad more from clichéd character archetypes than from actual motivations. It became clear within the first few minutes that the characters had no real motivations other than “the script said so”. The whole movie came across as a generic superhero fan-film, with a bunch of “cool” scenes strung together by terrible exposition or simply downright bad character exchanges. It starts almost immediately with one male character unsuccessfully hitting on a female character, while the others have a laugh, when some level of world building should have been the order of the day. This exchange tells us nothing of why they are suiting up all in shiny black leather, even though it’s obviously for something big and important. It just seemed an odd way to start the movie, but it’s far from the strangest or most stunted scene in a movie full of misplaced dialog.
The main cast does a great job with the lackluster material in front of them, especially Jessica Uberuaga and Michael Marinaccio as the leads. Luke Goss hams it up as the “villain”, becoming campier as the film works its way to a somewhat predictable ending, though I still have no idea what his motivation was due to the script by Thunder Levin and director Christian Sesma.
There are plenty of explosions, lightning strikes, fires, and other fx heavy shots to keep Mind Blown from becoming boring, even if those shots look incredibly cheap and flimsy. But then again, this is a movie about telekinetics fighting one another with wild and crazy powers, that was made on a TV budget. At least the music by Zoo Creatives was pretty cool.
If I had happened upon Mind Blown while flipping channels I’d probably give it a go, but I can’t for the life of me figure out the audience for this DVD. Mind Blown sits comfortably in the “miss” column with many other made for Syfy Channel movies, and that’s where it should have stayed.
Mind Blown is out on DVD and digital on October 24th.
Mind Blown
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Overall Score
Summary
Mind Blown is a poorly executed Syfy Channel movie full of as many plot holes as effects shots, with characters lacking motivation for almost any of their actions.
