Mindcage — A Movie Review

Title: Mindcage

Year of release: 2022

Runtime: 96 minutes

Cast: Martin Lawrence, John Malkovich, Melissa Roxburgh

Director: Mauro Borrelli

It is an ambitious goal for any director to live up to a classic film. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from an existing work and incorporating the building blocks of success into your own movie. As long as a movie is independent enough, I have no problem with borrowing from another.

Director Mauro Borrelli has obviously used the success formulas of films like The Silence of the Lambs or Seven in his work Mindcage. But does he deliver a movie to match?

The plot

Detectives Jake Doyle (Martin Lawrence) and Mary Kelly (Melissa Roxburgh) are working together on a complicated case. A series of murders has rocked the city, and the nature of the crimes has clear parallels to the actions of an imprisoned serial killer known as “The Artist” (John Malkovich). As the crimes continue despite the original perpetrator being behind bars, investigators turn to the imprisoned killer for help.

As Jake and Mary try to track down the current killer, they become entangled in a web of secrets, manipulation, and dark revelations. Encounters with “The Artist” bring unexpected twists and turns that lead the investigators deeper into the abyss of the human psyche.

The cast

I really wonder what prompted Borrelli to cast a comedian like Martin Lawrence in the lead role. Jake Doyle is a broken man who has lost his partner in previous investigations related to the artist.

Basically, the role has depth, and Doyle is given contour through flashbacks and individual dialogues. However, Lawrence is completely overburdened with the task of creating an authentic façade for the stressed, broken and yet brilliant investigator. I would even call Lawrence’s acting bad.

Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is not able to pull the coals out of the fire. John Malkovich is still the most convincing. The role of a psychopathic killer who dresses up his victims as works of art is unusual. Malkovich plays “The Artist” with great calm and elegance.

Melissa Roxbrugh gives a solid performance. Unfortunately, the screenplay does not draw any stringent characters, which leads to the figures behaving very strangely at times. The role of Mary is especially affected by this. The background, which is revealed at the end, is so badly thought out that Roxburgh must have had a hard time giving the cop an authentic performance.

Unfortunately, the acting in the movie is not convincing.

The Silence of the Lambs 2?

It’s obvious that director and writer Borrelli was inspired by the classic The Silence of the Lambs. However, he does not manage to reach the quality of the intimate play that Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster delivered back then.

The dialogue is far too weak. Some of the visual effects look like something out of a mediocre 1980s TV series. Some of the actors are miscast and fail in their roles. And the plot has some logical flaws.

Basically, the plot idea itself is interesting. Unfortunately, the ending and the resolution of the killer make it almost ridiculous.

If the movie were a parody of The Silence of the Lambs, it might work. But it takes itself much too seriously. Borrelli has created another example of a movie that was based on and inspired by a great role model, but failed completely.

Conclusion

Mindcage is a movie with an exciting idea. Unfortunately, it completely fails to measure up to the greats of the genre.

A comparison with the Hanibal movies is almost inevitable. The movie has too little of its own. But it doesn’t do any good to be compared to the classic, because it can’t keep up with it.

Furthermore, there are some technical mistakes that make Mindcage a bad movie in my opinion. Shame, it could have been better.

Rating: 2/10

This article was first published on Medium.com.