Filmed well and acting overall is competent but the problem is seeing Eric Roberts in the cast list - A once good actor who has turned to the dark-side like so many others and just taking the paycheque and doing the very minimum needed to achieve it rather than the artistic integrity of his previous movies and it shows in almost all of his recent movies.

This is pretty much Jessica Fletcher Murder She Wrote with none of the wit and charm of said series. It is a very basic thriller with a couple of twists you see coming from a mile away and with poor characterization you could not care less about any of the cast.

It also seems like the Director has posted a review on here criticising one of the actresses who star in this for making the movie difficult to make and this just sums it all up.

Acting was mostly good, thought i guessed it but didnt. Eric Roberts shouldnt have been cast, just awful these days

The theme of "The Perception" derives from a William Blake quote from a series of prophecies entitled "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite."

As a mystery, the film has a complex structure with a novelist working on book modeled on his life story as the events are unfolding. The critical relationship is that of the husband (Richard) and his wife (Haley). The marriage has been rocky, but appears to be invigorated by a newfound trust between the couple.

Richard hatches a plan to "test" his wife, then backs out on the deal, offending Matt, who was to be paid to seduce Haley. One thing leads to another, and Matt is killed and buried in the couple's backyard.

But appearances can be deceiving! One of the most interesting characters is Richard's literary agent Nick, as played by Eric Roberts. The agent is approached by both the husband and the wife, who share details about their unstable relationship. A shortcoming of the film is that, apart from the kind agent, the other characters were uniformly unlikable, including the protagonist, the novelist Richard.

Still, the film is successful in getting the viewer to think about which scenes are real and which ones are the products of the novelist's imagination. There is a clever plot twist that makes the final minutes of "The Perception" a mind-turning experience.