User Reviews

Knowing Renny Harlin's track record, you never know what to expect from the Finnish director. It seems it's more or less random which of his films turn out to be crap or really quite good. I didn't know what to expect here, and maybe my low expectations were part of the reason why i found this film to be surprisingly entertaining.

The setup is pretty standard-fare for a serial-killer film. What makes this different is the victims. They are FBI-agents in training to become profilers. Their teacher is Jake Harris (Val Kilmer) who likes to use special methods while training his agents. As a test the profilers-to-be are sent out to an army training facility on a desolate island. A small town is built on the island and the morning after their arrival a murder will have happened in the town, their job is to find the killer. Something goes wrong however and it seems the game has become real, a killer really is on the loose and now he's chasing them.

To say that this story is unbelievable and forced is an understatement. The whole set-up with an abandoned island feels a bit cheap, a lame excuse to get the agents alone in a place from which there is no escape. But if you can accept that particular bit of plot then the rest is not bad at all. The atmosphere is well built and the suspense is thick. Also most of the actors do a pretty good job creating that "anyone-could-be-guilty"-feeling.

So, even though the serial-killer thing has been done a thousand times and even though the set-up here is even less believable than usual, this is still an enjoyable experience. It might not be revolutionary, and it might not be something you'll remember for very long. But if you like this kind of movie you will at least be entertained for as long as it lasts. I rate it 6/10.

I saw this movie when in came out in 2004 and have since seen it a couple of times. It's still very enjoyable and has aged well. The pace is quick and most of the time you wonder what the hell is going on. Nowadays there seems to be the need for a twist in every movie, but I remember that in 2004 a twist was a rare thing an this movie was a pleasant surprise. I also like the fact that the big players in this ensemble C.Slater and V. Kilmer kind of disappear early on in the movie. That really keeps you guessing because nobody of the relatively unknown actors can be considered safe in this movie. If you see this on the TV, this movie is absolutely worth tuning in.

Renny Harlin isn't exactly known for making intelligent movies, but at least they're usually quite enjoyable. "Mindhunters", however, is so utterly stupid that it's hard to get any kind of enjoyment out of it, apart from maybe some unintentionally funny bits.

The concept behind Mindhunters (group of people get stuck somewhere with a killer on the loose) is OK, and it has lead to some exciting movies in the past, including Harlin's own "Deep Blue Sea", which, while also very stupid, at least didn't take itself seriously. Unfortunately, "Mindhunters" does. And that's were the problems start.

"Mindhunters" is about a group of supposedly talented FBI trainees getting stuck on an island. Before long, a mysterious killer starts killing them off one by one, using increasingly more elaborate traps (think "Final Destination"). The first problem with this is that the traps that are used are so ridiculously complicated and depend on so much circumstances that in real life, they would have a one in a billion chance of succeeding. They would also take hours to set up, time that simply no character has since they're all together almost all the time.

Next, although the main characters are supposed to be trained professionals, they immediately crack up after the first murder, and start panicking and wildly accusing each other for so reason whatsoever. Yeah right.

The list of implausibilities and plot holes goes on and on, right up to the conclusion that makes no sense whatsoever, and seems to be there only for shock value.

All of this might have worked if the movie hadn't taken itself so seriously, or if there had been any other redeeming qualities. There aren't. The acting is poor, none of the characters are even remotely interesting or even likable, and there's hardly any humor in the entire movie (in spite of LL Cool J's presence). The only small point of light in this mess are some of the murders, which, granted, are fairly spectacular.

"Mindhunters" is a movie that asks of you to completely abstain from using your brain for about over one and a half hours, for only a couple of seconds of gore. If you ask me, that's a pretty poor trade-off. There's nothing wrong with a bit of mindless entertainment, but this goes beyond any reasonable limit.

*1/2 out of *****

I had actually seen this movie 4 years back, but I didn't remember it. But I did remember actually enjoying the movie back then. As it was coming on TV the other day, I thought let me give it another try. I usually like these kinds of movies where a bunch of people are alone on an island and they have to survive against a killer on the loose, and it also helps that these people are not some horny teenagers and the killer is not Jason Vorhees!

A group of FBI newbies are stranded in the middle of an island by their trainer to simulate a training exercise. The exercise goes horribly wrong when they get killed off one by one by someone they don't even know. The killer is extremely intelligent and even tells them when they are going to die. After searching the entire island and finding nobody other than themselves, they start doubting each other. Now they have to find the killer and kill him before he brutally murders all of them.

The first time I had seen this, I thought it was a brilliant film. But now I think, though it was good, it was not path-breaking or out of the box. You can enjoy the movie for what it is. I loved the way the killings were done, they were completely bloody and gore. The sets were wonderful. The dialogues are somewhat cheesy and the acting was average. Still the movie is completely entertaining. Give it a try.

7/10

There were seven FBI profilers in the bed and the psychotic one said roll over roll over so they all rolled over and one dropped dead...

This is the story of a class of FBI profilers in training who are dropped on an island to do their "final exam". The work of a serial killer will be enacted and they will have to catch him. The trouble is that someone- perhaps one of their own- is taking them out one by one.

Directed with little sign of his occasional skill by Renny Harlin this is a remake of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. Its purely "by the book" direction and could have been put together by any reasonably talented director. Its reasonably acted by the cast which includes Christian Slater, Val Kilmer and LL Cool J.

Unfortunately this movie makes zero sense from its opening moments to its final fade out. There is simply no real internal logic to drive the story and so it simply becomes an okay time waster. How illogical is it? There are so many to choose from, but the easiest to explain is when one of the characters is brushing her teeth in a bathroom. She is looking in the mirror. Suddenly she turns around to find a dead cat hanging from the ceiling behind her. How it got there is never explained. She was in a room, all alone and suddenly this thing just appears. I was willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt up until that point, after all it had barely gotten started, but at that point I was more interested just getting to the end so I'd know who was behind it all (at least you do want to know who the killer is, I'll give it points for that).

If you like serial killer flicks and want to see them all or if you have a high tolerance for low quality thrillers give it a shot, it does have its moments, but over all this is not really something to sit down and watch. My guess this is the perfect film to catch on a commercial station while you're doing other things, after all that way you can blame any plot problems on the cutting for content and your attention to your other task.

four or five out of ten.

A group of FBI serial killer profilers is sent to a mock town on an uninhabited island for training, only to discover that one of them is an actual serial killer.

Let me start by saying that this film is as dumb as a sack of rocks. Much of it makes no sense at all, not least of which are some of the impossibly convoluted killing methods, which depend on knowing that so-and-so will be standing in just such a position at just such a time - murder by dominoes and liquid nitrogen being a case in point. I can envision someone being unprepared to suspend disbelief over that, so that the film turns them off completely. Personally, I thought it was a hoot.

And I think the cast has fun chewing the scenery in an over-the-top load of old nonsense, directed by Renny Harlin with panache, style, and tongue firmly in cheek.

So did I.

WARNING: minor SPOILERS within

When the movie opens with a good sequence, which later turns out to be a "training mission", you know you're in for one of 'those' movies. Mindhunters is, basically, Final Destination, meets D-Tox, meets Five Dolls for an August Moon, meets Deep Blue Sea. It's about a team of FBI agents that are dispatched to an island to complete a training mission. OK, in D-Tox it wasn't a training mission, but it's still more or less the same. While there, it becomes apparent that one of them is a serial killer amongst them, a la Five Dolls for an August Moon, that is killing them off in a series of over the top traps, much like the ones seen in Final Destination. It's surprising just how sure the filmmakers are that people won't have seen the Italian horror film; Five Dolls, as an entire sequence involving coffee and sleeping pills is entirely ripped off from that movie. Mindhunters also subscribes to the Deep Blue Sea school of killing off your big actors near the start, thereby lowering the cost of hiring them while retaining the benefit of being able to put "Val Kilmer" and "Christian Slater" on the movie poster.

Yes, it is Val Kilmer's name that you see sprawled across the top of the poster, but in actual fact he only appears for a mere 10 minutes or so. Also worth noting is the Hellraiser rip-off on his demise...are we noticing a pattern here? Christian Slater also has very little screen time considering how highly billed he is. His death scene is fairly decent, however; even if it is a rip-off of Terminator 2, and it's extremely implausible. A lot of the death scenes are fairly imaginative, but it seems that most of them are just trying to be as over the top as possible, without worrying about whether or not they are realistic. For example; there is a scene in which a woman is killed by ingesting smoke from a cigarette that has been soaked in acid. What doesn't make sense is...why didn't the cigarette melt when the acid touched it? In fact, the film is riddled with plot holes, that is just one of them.

The plot is based on a fairly good idea, however. The FBI people in the film are competing to become a 'profiler', which is basically someone that decides what type of person a serial killer is, judging by their method of killing. The killer in this movie uses this skill to exploit his victims by setting a trap that he knows they will walk into. "Are we really that predictable?" seems to be the question of the film, which is admirable because at least it has a question to ask. Despite stealing nearly everything about it's plot, and being, in effect; a labyrinth of borrowed items and ridiculous plot holes, Mindhunters does manage to be entertaining for it's duration. The film is not great by any stretch of the imagination, but it is worth seeing if you haven't got anything better to do, like I didn't when I watched it.

In wikipedia,you can read at the end of the long "And then there were none" entry: "although not a direct adaptation,"mindhunters" closely follows the storyline of the book".It's true that some scenes bear more than a distant resemblance with Christie's classic thriller ,but it is not the only one.It's closer ,anyway to the play (like all the versions but the Russian one ) than to the book..It's mainly glaring in the last scenes where any Christie's reader will compare the three characters'situation to that of Vera ,Wargrave and Lombard.

That said ,"Mindhunters" is not devoid of interest.You can also feel the "Saw" series influence when the "time is running out ".The crimes display some originality and the characters are a bit less cardboard than they usually are in this kind of flick.In the grand tradition of "Psycho" ,the most famous actor (Slater) is killed in the first third.He should have studied the domino principle in his FBI school.

When Christian Slater is on the marquee of the movie you're about to see, you can pretty much expect a couple things. The first one is that Slater most likely will die within the first reel and the other one is that the movie will probably suck. "Mindhunters" doesn't disappoint on either level. This is not a spoiler, this is fact.

Val Kilmer, another fallen star, is a sadistic trainer for a group of would be FBI profilers. The group is on the verge of advancing in the program but as a final test, Kilmer brings them to a secluded island to test their skills. The problem is that a killer is offing each profiler one by one and the agents all suspect each other. They all become paranoid and there is a lot of gun pointing.

This movie has some entertaining moments and I give it some props for coming up with such interesting ways of impalement and death. But for the most part, this movie is pretty stupid. The motivation behind all the violence is really pretty weak and I knew exactly when the little twist comes in to play.

"Mindhunters" is decent popcorn fare, but it's really a waste of time. (**)

As the baddy says toward the end of the movie that while the other agents were studying and training to be FBI agents the baddy studied them, their strengths and weaknesses. The baddy was smarter than them. Also they were in training without having much job experience yet. Obviously there is a difference between potential FBI agent and an experienced expert FBI agent. I'll admit the movie was not the most clever movie that would change your perspective on what a movie is but its not the dumbest movie or the worst movie ever. At the end of the day it was entertaining and that is all you need. Its definitely better than half the movies in 2017

A team of aspiring FBI profilers are flown to a remote island called Oneiga where others of their kind are trained. Overseen by an eccentric supervisor, Harris (Val Kilmer), their skills are put to the ultimate test when it seems that one of them has caught the killing bug themselves. And this psychopath knows just how to play to the skills and weaknesses of each character. Tensions flare among the group when they take turns suspecting each other.

Renny Harlin, director of such epics as "Die Hard 2" and "Cliffhanger", is clearly the right kind of guy for this sort of popcorn fare. It's pretty slick stuff, and the story *is* entertaining if also ridiculous at every turn. It's shot in a visually stark manner, with an almost monochromatic look. The production design by Charles Wood is pretty damn impressive. Things get rather gory at times, but suspense is minimal.

Although the screenplay by Wayne Kramer (director of "The Cooler" and "Running Scared" (2006)) is always taking turns making characters look suspicious, ultimately the big reveal is not terribly surprising. This viewer was reminded of John Carpenters' "The Thing" while watching (there's even a blood testing plot point). The closest thing that the story has to a likable, sympathetic character is Sara Moore (Kathryn Morris); there just aren't that many people here worth giving a damn about.

Not that the actors can be faulted. Morris is an appealing lead, while LL Cool J is given the opportunity to show off his physique, commit heroic acts, and basically be a bad ass. Eion Bailey, Clifton Collins Jr., Will Kemp, Jonny Lee Miller, Christian Slater, and Patricia Velasquez co-star. Slater has quite a memorable departure from the story.

Overall, this is rather silly, but it entertains in its own crazed way.

Seven out of 10.

Renny Harlin's Mindhunters is essentially the CSI version of And Then There Were None.

Yes, it's cheesy. It's the kind of movie where the killer crafts ludicrously complex booby traps in a few minutes; where the victims, supposedly competent F.B.I. agents, have the survival instinct of drunken lemmings; where the script never misses a chance to misdirect (which is fine) and cheat (which isn't).

For example, see the prologue. We meet Sarah (Kathryn Morris) and J.D. (Christian Slater) as they search for "someone" in an isolated mansion. We are led to believe this "someone" is a real killer; it turns out to be a test designed by their superior Harris (Val Kilmer), as the two rookies knew all too well. But their behaviour in the scene makes no sense in this context: they talk and act as if confronting a real murderer. This kind of dishonesty runs through the script.

Whatever. Harris brings Sarah, J.D. and other trainees on a deserted island for their final test. Team members start dying, there's a serial killer on the loose; cue poisoned cigarettes, explosive traps, enigmatic clues taunting the survivors.

Performances are unremarkable with the exception of Cold Case's Kathryn Morris, who is passable as Sarah. Val Kilmer has little more than a cameo.

In short: pretty bad, not unwatchable - in the right mood, it can even entertain.

5,5/10