By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1 cat
Director: Victor Teran | Youssef Delara
Country: united_states
Year: 2015
Running time: 88
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2229377
Kyle says: “ENTER THE DANGEROUS MIND, also known confusingly by its working title and alternate Netflix listing as SNAP, is an attempt at a psychological thriller based on a variation of the Faust story. Except this Mephistopheles avatar seems unclear about what he wants. Jim (Jake Hoffman) is a computer expert and electronic rock composer with a small but significant online following, who is incapable of talking to and asking out women. His ‘friend’ Jake (Thomas Dekker) encourages him sexually and inappropriately, confessing to planting a device in his ear so he can instruct him what to say and how to behave on dates. The Gretchen/Marguerite is Wendy (Nikki Reed), an attractive social worker who responds to his music, but not to his abusive ways: The day after a date which is ruined by his premature ejaculation, Jim confronts Wendy in her office, and at the urging of the voice in his head, calls her ‘a fucking cunt’. If you guess this ends their relationship, you are wrong.
“At 41 minutes there is a scene out of nowhere between Wendy and Kevin (Scott Bakula), a social worker who declares Jim a casualty of psychopathological disturbances, and cinematic coherence goes right out the window. Jim drinks vodka from the bottle, plays rock at deafening volumes, and uses a Phillips head screwdriver to puncture his ear, attack the voices in his head, and fill the bathroom sink with blood. Refusing to give up, Kevin visits Jim’s mother, who helpfully declares, ‘You can’t prove anything, and you can’t change anything’. We already know something terrible happened, which is revealed to be 13-year-old Jim’s being kidnaped, drugged, raped and made to watch as his half-brother kills the other boy. The half-brother is of course the Mephistopheles avatar, and I guess he’s after Jim’s soul after all, with fratricide tossed into the mix for motive. The oxymoronically named mental health professional Dr. Dubrow (Jason Priestley) interviews Jim, as he repeats what the Jake voice tells him verbatim (The Phillips head screwdriver is revealed to have failed), the two finally speaking in unison.
“The climactic bloodbath can be sniffed from a mile away, one of the victims goading the killer by screaming ‘TINY DICK!’ at him. This is a malignant, mean-spirited, misogynistic movie. Anyone interested in the Faust tale has a choice of spiritual enlightenment, not to mention good story-telling, with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christopher Marlowe (including the film with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor), Mikhail Bulgakov, Charles Gounod, Arrigo Boîto, Feruccio Busoni, Thomas Mann, F.W. Murnau, and Aleksandr Sokurov. ‘The world is a nasty, fucked-up place, my friend’, says the detective, obviously speaking about a world that habitually foists garbage like this upon unsuspecting audiences (the ‘Deathrock’ soundtrack may interest a few). 1 cat
“Tuesday, August 18, 2015, on Netflix, New York”