It was at the New York City Horror Film Festival back in 2005 that I first met director and producer Andrew van den Houten while sitting in the audience at Tribeca Cinema. He and his cohorts were in-house for the world premiere of his first independent venture into horror – Headspace. Unbeknownst at the time, it would firmly set the foundation for Houten’s film company Moderncine (which would later direct and/or produce Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum’s Offspring, Ketchum & McKee’s The Woman, and Brian Keene’s Ghoul) building toward their present day reputation for art house caliber productions, creating gutter-violent and dark, taboo material for those who usually wouldn’t confront such content directly.
In Headspace, Houten’s rookie passion for horror puts forth a psychological yarn knotted with psionic nightmares and beasts that crossover from them. On paper, or from the mind of Troy McCombs who actually milked this plot from a dream – it sounds like a rich, cerebral thriller. With a veteran cast from Olivia Hussey to William Atherton to Udo Kier, and stage caliber talent like Christopher Denham, the original cut of Headspace – even with such a steroidal cast and crew – still manages to land on tails instead of heads. A good looking, well acted, New York City set horror film that just somehow falls flat for oddballs reasons. A bit like Houten’s other film, Offspring. Here’s why. READ MORE
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