As a child, Alex and his brother watched their father blow their mother’s head off, so that she couldn’t kill them. She had gone from normal housewife to murdering psycho seemingly overnight after getting a simple nosebleed. Now Alex (Christopher Denham) is 25 and living alone in New York City. We have no clue where his father and brother are, but he’s making it on his own and even has a few friends. Things start to change the day that he stumbles upon a chess game in the park. He meets Harry Jellenik (Erick Kastel) there. Harry is a master chess player and beats Alex in a matter of seconds, leaving Alex with a massive headache.
Not long after, Alex collapses at his residence so his friend Jason (Paul Sparks) calls an ambulance. At the hospital, Alex finds out that his frontal lobe is more active than anyone on record. He is simply getting smarter. The doctors at the hospital can’t do anything to help him though. Dr. Ira Gold (William Atherton) even wants to keep him around to study him. Dr. Denise Bell (Dee Wallace) sends him to see a friend of hers, Dr. Karen Murphy (Olivia Hussey), who is doing a study to see if she can help him. Talking doesn’t help much though and things are starting to crash around Alex quickly. People are getting killed and strange things keep getting worse. Alex is going to have to figure out what is going on before he can save himself. Is any of it real though?
Headspace: Director's Cut is one of those movies that leaves some things very open-ended so that you have to stop and think about things for yourself and decide what you really think is going on. Granted, the ending left us feeling a bit lost because it doesn’t leave things concrete, but in a way that is good. I would much prefer that as to something like The Devil’s Chair, where they made the ending concrete (and ruined the movie). I like that even the Deleted and Extended Scenes don’t set anything in stone. They add to some things, but they don’t ruin anything. If you’re looking for a good psychological horror and you don’t expect to necessarily understand everything without thinking about it, check out Headspace: Director's Cut.
