Mindscape, given the less tantalizing title 'Anna' upon release, is a thinking person's thriller, and perhaps a little bit too much so. In the near future, or perhaps some alternate reality, some humans have evolved into pseudo clairvoyants who can enter the memories of other people and interact with their subjects within them. This talent has been trademarked by law enforcement, who employ 'memory detectives' to psychologically resolve conflict or retrieve otherwise out of reach information. Mark Strong is one such man, but his talents have dimmed a bit following the deaths of his family and a crippling stroke. Hauled out of retirement by his former boss (Brian Cox, sly as ever), he finds himself tasked with navigating the labyrinthine mind of Anna (Taissa Farmiga) a girl accused of murder and deemed a potential sociopath pending diagnosis. The film is deliberately dense and elliptical, not standard Hollywood fare at all, which is nice to see, but it also trips just a little bit on its own cognitive aspirations, especially in the third act. It's one of those pieces that's less like The Cell, and more like Vanilla Sky or Danny Boyle's Trance (two absolute favourites of mine) where so much of the story wades through muddy mindgames that at a certain point we think to ourselves 'well who's to say if any of this is actually real if it's gotten so complex', and indeed it's very difficult to piece together what has transpired here, especially with a conclusion that would require multiple viewings to even get an inkling. It's stylish as all hell though, given a clinical, steely grey palette punctuated by flourishes of startling red to show the capacity for violence lurking just out of sight within the opaque and enigmatic human psyche. The acting is top tier as well; Strong is reliably committed and intense, Farmiga is deeply disconcerting as the most fascinating and ambiguous character, showing blossoming talent that I look forward to seeing more of, while Cox steals his scenes as per usual. The film trips over itself a few times and like I said, overly convoluted, but it's one mesmerizing effort for the most part, albeit after a second or third viewing.

MINDSCAPE is a rather routine sci-fi thriller that pays obvious nods to previous movies like INCEPTION and PAPERHOUSE. The main character is a kind of psychological detective who, through the MacGuffin of near-future technology, is able to enter into the head of participants and observe their memories playing out.

It's a rather familiar premise and one they don't really do much with , despite best intentions. I appreciated the film's low key atmosphere and the occasional scene of brooding tension, and Mark Strong is a pleasure to watch as an actor, as always. But it's the script that falls down here and ends up being a lot less than the sum of its parts. The pacing is slow and there's an almost entire lack of incident, and by the end it just fizzles into a near-zero stakes game which didn't interest me whatsoever.

It's a pity, as a decent supporting cast (Noah Taylor, Indira Varma, Brian Cox) and a good performance from the fresh-faced Taissa Farmiga (sister of Vera) add up to not much at all.