Mind Body Spirit review.
Mind Body Spirit is a found footage movie about an influencer who inherits a house with dark secrets. This is our white whale.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Mind Body Spirit
Directed by Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda
Screenplay by Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda
Starring Sarah J. Bartholomew
Mind Body Spirit Review
Welcome Villain Films has been busy since launching all the way back in 2022. They produced the critically successful remake of The Last Shift…Malum. We questioned the need for it…but it’s a fine film, nonetheless. They have also distributed some pretty good genre fare with Hunt Her, Kill Her, (allegedly) Invoking Yell, and now…Mind Body Spirit. I say “allegedly” Invoking Yell because…well…I don’t remember that coming out anywhere. It’s a good one though. If you can find it…check it out. Either way…each of these movies that Welcome Villain has had their hand in are of a quality worthy of recommendation. That includes Mind Body Spirit.
In a weird way…Mind Body Spirit feels like a movie that we’ve been building towards. Well…not “we” so much as independent horror. We just cover the trends. This is a movie full of trends. For starters, we’ve got the found footage format…always a controversial choice regardless of how many good movies are made with it. This is also another new installment of our favorite recent subgenre…inheritance horror. Most recently seen in House of Screaming Glass. Not content to stop there…Mind Body Spirit tackles our least favorite recent subgenre…influencer horror. That’s right. Mind Body Spirit is a found footage movie about an influencer who inherits a house with dark secrets. It finally happened.
We have fun discussing these trends…but don’t let that dissuade you from giving Mind Body Spirit a chance. For starters, it doesn’t fall into the traps that horror movies about influencers tend to. Anya (Sarah J. Bartholomew) is launching a channel to teach yoga…but she isn’t driven by clicks and followers or consumed by a fake persona. We see some of that in friend (and more successful influencer) Kenzi (Madi Bready) …but it’s played for conflict not as the focus of the story.
Anya has inherited her grandmother’s home. She never met the woman. It’s clear from discussions with her mother that there is a lot of family drama behind that story. Anya sets up shop hoping to find herself. Instead, she finds a secret room, a partially translated journal, and one severely haunted house. Inheritance horror generally takes the same approach every time out. Mind Body Spirit is no different. A character inherits a building and finds that their legacy is much more sinister than the title deed on a property. In this case, Anya becomes obsessed with her grandmother’s writings. Unaware that the deeper she reads the closer her grandmother becomes.
Which brings us to a couple of odd choices in the storytelling format used in Mind Body Spirit. We’ve argued for years that there is nothing wrong with the found footage format. A lot of good movies come out of it despite usually being a necessity for many low-budget productions more than a creative choice. Mind Body Spirit makes fine use of the format. Most of the time. There are a few weird things going on, however.
In the story, Anya hasn’t uploaded her videos yet. We can assume that they are uploaded after the events of the film. That’s how the found aspect of found footage usually works. That explains why there are intermittent ad breaks like you would find watching a YouTube channel without paying for a subscription. What it doesn’t explain is how Anya isn’t aware of what’s going on around her whatsoever. Apparently, she’s not editing or watching any of her footage either. Had she been keen to check in on any of the footage she’d been shooting she would surely have noticed some issues. Like, say…her dead grandmother haunting around the background of shots. Or perhaps…the camera moving on its own. Much of the footage we see involves things that Anya never does.
A lot of it is effective. Spooky moments and a fine sense of creeping dread are captured by the seemingly autonomous camera. Even imagining that the evil in the house is taking control of the production is enough to send a shiver down the spine. It also makes disbelief harder to suspend. Anya, as you would expect, goes through a mental deterioration caused by the evil that fills her home. But she isn’t incapable of understanding something strange is happening. Which makes her failure to ever think to check the tapes hard to swallow. Scripting in that she isn’t putting the videos out yet is an admittedly decent explanation. After a point the house has corrupted Anya enough to buy that she isn’t concerned about it. But to never look at the thing you are creating? It’s a tough sell.
It’s also not the point of the movie. Mind Body Spirit may be the found footage movie about an influencer who inherits a house with dark secrets we’ve been waiting for…but it’s mostly about the inheritance part of that. Barthlomew does a great job carrying a story of personal discovery turned physical and emotional devastation. She is on screen alone most of the time. Kenzi is the only character she ever interacts with in the same space. Well…unless you count dear dead grandma. Her mother appears on a zoom call…but that’s the extent of Anya’s world.
Mind Body Spirit shows a steady decline of the human psyche presented with a growing tension in a haunted house. It also features Anya speaking the words of ritual chants found in a cursed tomb as a relaxation technique. An idea so good that it’s hard to believe no one mixed influencer and inheritance stories before now.
Scare Value
Set aside any preconceived notions about found footage and stories about influencers. Mind Body Spirit uses both ideas to enhance the subject it is most interested in. This is a strong entry in the inheritance horror canon. Creepy things happening to an unsuspecting and increasingly complacent character is a winning strategy. That’s what Mind Body Spirit is all about.
3.5/5
Mind Body Spirit Link
Rent/Buy on VOD from Fandango at Home
