Altered Minds

One doesn't have to look far to find fault with this ill-conceived, unbearably maudlin psychological “thriller” (the title of which gives away the central secret of the film). Clearly the movie's hopes for success are pinned on the presence of venerable veteran actor Judd Hirsch, who plays dying Nobel prize-winning ex-CIA psychiatrist Nathaniel Shellner, a proud man who just wants to live out the rest of his days watching Chaplin movies with his doting wife while spinning yarns about the Cold War. The trouble begins when he invites his children—three of whom are adoptees (and all four profoundly unlikeable)—to the house for one last get-together. Shellner's adopted son Tommy is a mentally unstable horror novelist who comes to the gathering with tormented visions that he, along with the other adopted siblings, were acquired by their father to be subjects for his top-secret Manchurian Candidate-style mind-control experiments. Tommy's psychic breaks eventually have a ripple effect that ends up driving his siblings to dredge up long-latent subconscious bugbears. The cast's one-note histrionics, which sadly obscure Hirsch's gutsy performance, are disappointing enough. However, it's director Michael Z. Wechsler's inability to build tension from scene to scene or sustain any control over the imaginative but convoluted script that dooms this well-meaning movie in the end. Optional. (M. Sandlin)