For a film that boasts "gore and beasties and gratuitous nudity" and revealing that "the scariest place on earth is between our own ears," "Headspace" falls short of its proclamations. It attempts to be an intelligent thriller that relies more on the "what if?" factor than anything else. Sure, there are a couple of reasonably gory moments in the film, but nothing worthy of the praises or awards it features on its DVD case. The gratuitous nudity is late night Cinemax-worthy, but nothing to write home about.
The story involves the splitting of two young brothers by a seemingly uncaring father after the violent death of their mother. One boy has become super intelligent and is the focus of this tale, while the other is slowly revealed through flashbacks in the smart brother's mind. Our hero begins to have vicious headaches and horrible nightmares that eventually put him in the hospital. Unable to diagnose him, his doctor releases him into the care of a psychiatrist who attempts to figure out what's going on in his head. As the days go by, however, the body count grows. Eventually, the boy figures out what's really happening in his mind and attempts to struggle with his demons both inside and outside of his brain.
The story does have a nice twist to it involving a key character in the story, but I don't want to give away any more information. Had a little more time been spent on this tale, and less emphasis on tauting the gore, this could have been a wonderful, suspenseful tale. Instead, we get a movie that attempts to be both intelligent and gory at the same time and fails at both.
The acting is pretty good, but the bulk of the cast is towed along by former scream queen Dee Wallace Stone, ex-Juliet Olivia Hussey, the capable William Atherton, and the still lovely Sean Young. The rest of the cast is made up of newcomers.
The creatures in this feature are okay, but they do look somewhat like a cross between a pig and the vampire bat that Gary Oldman turns into in "Bram Stoker's Dracula."
In short, I'd consider this flick a one-time rental. It doesn't add or take away from the horror genre, but the DVD case will mislead you to believe so.