Review: MINDHUNTERS

Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 12, 2005, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.

It somehow seems inevitable that Mindhunters, a Renny Harlin film that has been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years, is coming out at the same time as Paul Schrader’s Exorcist prequel, which was also shelved for a couple of years in favor of the new version directed by…Renny Harlin. Isn’t irony ironic? Hitting theaters as part of the Miramax/Dimension housecleaning in the wake of the companies’ separation from Disney, Mindhunters contains little beyond a few names in the cast to suggest why it isn’t simply being given a high-profile video launch.

Set on an island off the North Carolina coast but actually filmed in Holland (no doubt for the easy access to red herrings), Mindhunters’ premise sets a fairly high bar that the film wastes no time in not living up to. After an introductory suspense setpiece that anyone aware of the storyline will know is actually a training exercise, we’re introduced to a group of aspiring profilers studying at FBI headquarters (whose entrance sign reads in part “Quantico, VA,” to remind the slower trainees where they are). Their instructor, Jake Harris (Val Kilmer), takes them on a final assignment to that island, where a faux small town has been set up as the staging area for a simulated serial-killer scenario. The trainees, joined by a Philadelphia cop played by (as he’s billed) James Todd Smith a.k.a. LL Cool J, are soon stranded and falling victim to a real murderer, and have to use their skills to figure out the attacker’s identity and save their own skins.

The script by Wayne Kramer (The Cooler) and Kevin Brodbin (Constantine) doesn’t follow through on the idea of a group of behavioral specialists suddenly forced to use their collective expertise in a life-or-death situation. For the most part, they respond to the threat with no more intellect than a group of coeds trapped in a sorority house, and there’s far less honest deduction on view here than in a typical episode of CSI. You can’t really blame the characters, though, because the traps set up for them are so elaborate as to defy rationalization, much less simple plausibility. It quickly becomes clear that the killer is one of this group, and thus the movie asks us to believe that a person who has never been to the island before, with no prior knowledge of what supplies might be available, is able to contrive a series of Rube Goldbergian death-dealing setups with the anticipation of not only where the potential victims will be, but how they’ll behave.

Of course, that’s part of the point: The murderer is profiling his prey at the same time they’re trying to suss out his motivation and state of mind. But sometimes their actions are just plain foolish. Here’s a question (and a SPOILER ALERT, just to be safe): You’re stranded with a group of people who are all aware you’re a reformed smoker, at the mercy of a madman who supposedly knows and is exploiting everyone’s weaknesses. When you ill-advisedly leave the group, and suddenly packs of smokes start popping out of every cigarette machine on the island, would you just grab one and light up?

The scenario is contrived to the point that a director with the right satirical bent (like Joe Dante, who was originally attached) might have mined sardonic humor out of the situations. Harlin, on the other hand, plays it all completely straight, and so does the cast—also including Christian Slater, Kathryn Morris and Stephen Sommers film survivors Patricia Velasquez (The Mummy Returns) and Will Kemp (Van Helsing)—and composer Tuomas Kantelinen, whose score practically beats you over the head with how dramatic, surprising and shocking this is all supposed to be. Robert Gantz’s cinematography and Charles Wood’s production design are more successful at establishing the proper atmosphere, while the makeup FX by a variety of credited artists run hot and cold.

The movie ends at least twice on the way to the final revelation of who’s behind all the bloodshed, and by then it’s hard to recall whether it all makes sense in context, and just as difficult to care. Mindhunters’ potential was a terrible thing for the filmmakers to waste, and the result isn’t an especially good way to kill time, either.