Jeff Goldblum plays a family man who technically dies in an horrific car accident but is thankfully revived after spending two hours on ‘the other side’. However, it seems that in his journey back to life, something or someone has been brought back with him. He starts having horrific flash visions of brutal torture and murders, as it appears that he can now see, via psychic link, through the eyes of a killer (a young Satanic psycho played by Jeremy Sisto). Unfortunately, Sisto is very aware of Goldblum as well, and is able to use it to his nefarious advantage. Christine Lahti is Goldblum’s concerned wife, Alicia Silverstone is his teenage daughter destined to be in peril at some point, Alfred Molina is the doctor who revived him, Kenneth Welsh is a cop for the millionth time, and Rae Dawn Chong turns up as a psychic medium who on evidence here, cannot foretell her own future.
Novels or stories by Dean R. Koontz haven’t a great track record when it comes to cinematic translation (the best was perhaps ‘Intensity’ and that had to settle for cable TV treatment) and this crummy Brett Leonard horror-thriller is no exception, with Koontz himself disappointed with the result. It’s like a virtual reality re-run of ‘The Eyes of Laura Mars’, a film with its own problems (a transparent killer), but significantly more watchable than this. This sort of psychic link movie rarely works on screen, always coming across as hokey and unconvincing, and this is not different.
Goldblum is a natural fit in this kind of kooky, intense role, the only other actors I could see in the part are Michael Keaton or Rutger Hauer. Unfortunately there is nothing he can do with this material. Scenes of him tossing and turning as he reacts to seeing what Sisto is doing are entirely laughable and indicative of why this sort of thing rarely works on screen. Lahti is wasted in a nothing role, whilst Sisto wasn’t quite up to the task at this early point in his career, and ‘flavour of the month’ Silverstone is typically cynical and sulky, her only two acting modes. Anyone noticed that she rarely works these days? Hmmm, I wonder why that is.
After the initial set-up the film becomes entirely predictable, and it’s not really my favourite kind of film to begin with. Clearly the plot is so minimal that it ends up having to play at half-speed resulting in crashing boredom for the audience. The only thing I got out of it is the attractive cinematography by Gale Tattersall (‘Wild Orchid’, ‘The Commitments’, ‘Virtuosity’), which is really pretty, if a little soiled by the MTV editing approach. Speaking of MTV, the industrial metal soundtrack is nauseating stuff. Pretty as the FX might be, they’re not even top-notch for 1995. Even more laughable is this film’s attempt to cash in on the then-cool rave scene, shoe-horning it into the story. Meanwhile, there’s some really icky moments of Goldblum seeing through Sisto’s eyes as he watches Silverstone sexily gyrate on the dance floor.
It’s shocking to me that Andrew Kevin Walker (‘Se7en’) co-wrote the screenplay to this, he’s much more talented than this lame story and awful dialogue suggest. Perhaps co-writer Neal Jimenez (‘The River’s Edge’, ‘The Waterdance’) is the culprit, maybe he re-wrote all of Walker’s stuff and turned it into a bomb, but Jimenez has proven talented in the past too. No matter who’s to blame, the film is dull, clichéd and obvious. Even the big twist isn’t nearly as clever as Leonard and the screenwriters think it is. It’s just there to be a twist for its own sake.
OVERALL SUMMARY
If you’re into psychic link movies you might get a little more out of it than I did, but for me, with the talent involved (And Leonard and Silverstone), the film should’ve been better, whatever its subject matter. Pretty lame.
