Mindless 'Mind's Eye' a cheesy, low-budget horror tale

If Joe Begos' cheesy, low-grade, bargain-basement-budgeted horror tale "The Mind's Eye" teaches us anything, it might be that super-telekinetic powers don't necessarily equate to super-high IQs.

Take Zack (Graham Skipper) and Rachel (Lauren Ashley Carter), telekinetically gifted people on the run from insane Dr. Slovak (John Speredakos). He injects himself with spinal fluid that will give him their telekinetic powers - the ability to move objects through sheer will.

Former lovers Zack and Rachel escape his compound and flee to his dad's house nearby. Dad (Larry Fessenden) says his house will be the obvious place that Dr. Slovak and his thugs will search first.

"Maybe we should go," Zack says. But then, they stay anyway. Dr. Slovak and his thugs find them.

Cue the gory, mind-blowing, thinning-of-the-herd activities.

"The Mind's Eye" represents an affectionate throwback to 1980s horror films: a little bit of Brian DePalma's "The Fury," a big dash of David Cronenberg's "Scanners" and a tip of the hat to Chicago's Organic Theater founder Stuart Gordon, who directed several low-budget creepies, among them "The Re-Animator" and "From Beyond," both based on H.P. Lovecraft stories.

But let's be clear. "The Mind's Eye" doesn't match up with those films.

The scariest aspect of "The Mind's Eye" would be the shrill, hyper-pitched performances that Begos ruthlessly extracts from his poor cast members. Skipper and Speredakos square off in a telekinetic grudge match in which the winner is apparently the one who screams like a tortured banshee, triples the blood pressure to his head and pops an aneurysm before the other guy can.

There might be a certain lowbrow charm to watching dark veins rake across Speredakos' mad-scientist face like the canals on Mars. Or how after injecting himself with spinal fluid, he begins speaking like demon-possessed kids from all those cheapie "Exorcist" rip-offs.

The "Mind's Eye" supporting characters (all of whom might as well be wearing red shirts in an old "Star Trek" episode) never catch on that if they pull guns on a telekinetic, they should fire before he can mentally force them to turn their own weapons on themselves.

But then, what would we expect from a silly movie that constantly shoots itself in the footage?