Director/Screenplay – Mel House, Producers – James LaMarr & Mel House, Photography – Philip Roy, Music – Dwayne Cathey & Mel House, Visual Effects Supervisors – Stacy Davidson & Mel House, Visual Effects – Visual Odyssee, Special Effects Supervisor – Marcus Koch, Special Effects – Offtopsy FX. Production Company – Incendiary Features/Upstart Filmworks.
Cast
Reggie Bannister (Joseph Webber), Denton Blane Everett (Cole Gray), Adrienne King (Louise Strack), James LaMarr (Phillip Anderson), Omar Adam (Mark Kincaid), Todd Farr (Jason Freese), Glenn Morshower (Mr. Anderson), Kathy Lamkin (Mrs. Anderson), Melanie Donihoo (Lisa Stanton), Debbie Rochon (Marie Gray), Katie Featherston (Elspeth Thompson), Shannon Lark (Jennifer Crusel), Cesar Castillo (John Rodriguez), Natalie Jones (Julie Dylan), Eryn Brooke (Tracie Johnson), Sean Bryson (William Nesbitt), Tommy Bo (Agent Daniel Park)
Plot
Cole Gray goes to take up a position as director of a facility in Twinbrook. At the same time, the town is plagued by mysterious disappearances. A group of local activists are preparing to gather evidence about Joseph Webber, a convicted paedophile who has just been relocated to the town. However, experiments conducted at the facility have opened the way and creatures are appearing and snatching locals. These also cause a harassed Webber to manifest powers that make the toys in a store come to life, among other things.
Psychic Experiment was one of the films from Mel House who had previously directed Fade to Black (2001), Closet Space (2008), Witchcraft 13: Blood of the Chosen (2008) and the subsequent Mystery Spot (2021), all horror films. He has also acted as a producer on assorted other films.
You have to commend Mel House for the fact that he creates some undeniably wild visuals. Early on there is a scene where some kind of transdimensional opening appears in an alleyway wall and then a black figure with flames coming off their skin appears and attacks a guy. The institution’s security guard returns home to be ignored by his kid who has headphones on while playing a videogame in front of the tv, only for the camera to cut away and show that the kid’s head is a gaping maw, before the guard goes into the kitchen and finds his wife is a pile of goo with body parts still moving. Later one victim has his face torn off and is dragged down to what would appear to be hell as another transdimensional hole opens up in the floor. What kills off the effectiveness of these scenes is tatty visual effects. Otherwise you are thinking that Psychic Experiment could approach something of Brian Yuzna in his heyday like around the time of Society (1989).
Even more outrageous is the scene where Reggie Bannister enters a department store and is shamed/humiliated by the staff, causing for reasons unclear a psychic manifestation to occur, bringing toys to life whereupon they proceed to attack the shoppers, carving them up and eviscerating them with blades they pop out of the end of their hands. The dolls even hold a woman down and tearing her top off to molest her – we even gets scenes of the dolls rubbing their crotches in excitement! Thrown into the mix for no apparent reason is a variant on the elevator of blood from The Shining (1980), which erupts with a torrent of blood in the hallways of the facility.
Glenn Morshower and Kathy Lamkin fused together
The main problem is it is almost impossible to work out what is going on in Psychic Experiment. There is something to do with an institution that was conducting experiments but is it not clear if they created psychic powers or opened up the way to some Lovecraftian entities. There is a lot of talk about ‘pushers’ (the film’s term for psychics) and how the experiment has amplified their powers.
The film also has way too many characters such that it is hard trying to keep track of their personal dramas – James LaMarr and his parents, Debbie Rochon as the problem mother of Denton Blane Everett, and Omar Adam and something to do with his girlfriend. The latter half turns into an incomprehensible morass in between these personal dramas, about what is going on with the experiments and the manifestations of psychic powers.
Psychic Experiment is certainly cast with a good number of actors who pay homage to the genre’s past. The most prominent name is Adrienne King who was Alice in Friday the 13th (1980) and had not acted in thirty years since appearing in the sequel Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), as the head of the experiments. The released paedophile is played by Reggie Bannister from Phantasm (1979) and sequels. There is Debbie Rochon who has appeared in a crapload of low-budget horror films. Kathy Lamkin, the Tea Lady from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), appears alongside Glenn Morshower as the parents of James LaMarr. Katie Featherston from Paranormal Activity (2007) briefly appears as the hero’s girlfriend in the opening scenes.
