‘MindGamers’ Is the Best Bad Movie You Haven’t Seen on Netflix

I’ve fallen down many pop culture rabbit holes over the past year in quarantine (378 days, to be exact). You do what you gotta do to fight off depression while the world feels like it’s falling apart! The pop culture project that’s currently keeping me going is my mission to watch Sam Neill’s entire filmography. If that seems like a specific choice, well, welcome to me. I include this indulgent preamble because I truly know no other way to explain why I would ever come across the film MindGamers on Netflix other than the truth: Sam Neill got the opportunity to spend a couple weeks in Romania, and he only had to appear in a few scenes in this film in return. Seems like a good trade-off to me—especially when the result is as gloriously bizarre and bewildering as MindGamers.

What is MindGamers? I think it’s a film, but you could tell me that it’s a 90-minute Aphex Twin music video and I would find no lie. Netflix describes the film as “mind-bending, dystopian, slick” and to that I say, “Yes?” The plot? I actually do not know and I highly doubt the movie even knows, but I think this is how I’d describe it: Sam Neill plays a genius techno-priest who manipulates a group of Hot Topic-goth hackers into using brain WiFi to cure his paralysis by harnessing the power of parkour and dubstep.

If that’s enough for you, please, stop what you are doing and watch this movie right now. It’s just over 93 minutes long. You have the time. If you need more convincing or just want me to explain what in the actual hell I just described and see some of the worst hair ever put atop a human’s noggin, keep reading because I’m just gonna break that plot (?) description (??) down bit by bit.

First, Sam Neill. Legendary New Zealand character actor, wine maker, Instagram king, and champion of indigenous rights. Is Sam Neill more than just my first and foremost celebrity crush? Is he a sterling example of the kind of easygoing, curious, thoughtful, silly masculinity that I strive to embody? Of course he is. And in this movie, he… gets to wear half a Destro mask while monologuing to a bunch of techno-students at techno-college.

Sam plays a techno-priest, which is different from a robo-pope. What do I mean by that? Your guess is as good as mine! It’s just nonsense that I made up to try to pin down the nonsensical hot takes the movie has about the relationship between religion and technology. God is a machine, man, and this movie conveys that by opening with a Bible verse (don’t worry, this is not a Kirk Cameron production). At least Sam got to wear some crimson iridescent priestly garb!

…. Y’know, I’ll say it: He’s still hot!

But Sam is not the star of this film, even if he is as far as I’m concerned. The real star is Tom Payne, currently the star of Prodigal Son on Fox and previously of The Walking Dead. He plays a super hacker named Jaxon (who is, sadly, not a six-foot tall rabbit mercenary) who enrolls at techno-college to learn the art of hacking brains (again, I think). His pals are the aforementioned Hot Topic goths and, well, am I wrong?

The film is also co-written and directed by a man named Andrew Goth. But okay okay okay—truthfully, they aren’t all Hot Topic goths. As you can see, these characters also shop at Banana Republic and the Gap.

But the hair, y’all. The actual hair-like-things they put on top of these poor people’s heads! Because it’s the future, we get haircuts like this bowl cut with what I can only described as anti-bangs.

And then the wigs! What kind of film is MindGamers? It is a film that introduces characters who look like Dark Phoenix and Bride of Frankenstein and doesn’t even flinch. This is what normal looks like.

In the future, everyone looks like an anthropomorphic Spirit Halloween.

The brain Wi-Fi—I don’t even know. The movie uses an actual experiment done at Duke University that linked up a bunch of rat brains via the internet as its jumping off point. How do I know this? The movie tells me all this via text on the screen, before the Bible verse. And the brain Wi-Fi is used to… cure paralysis? Listen: Not-Pope Sam Neill got his face all messed up while having sex with Bride of Frankenstein and he wants to fix that, and channeling the power kicked up by brain Wi-Fi into his body is the only way to do it. Does this not make sense to you?

And then there’s how MindGamers depicts what people would do when given the opportunity to link minds and reach the peak level of human performance: parkour. Lots of parkour. So. Much. Parkour. The movie opens with parkour! The Dark Phoenix lady (who is also a chosen one because sure) runs afoul of a parkour street gang! When Hot Topic hacker and Banana Republic hacker interface with a parkour master, they too become parkour masters. Flipping! Jumping! Taking the longest most dangerous route possible to get places via flips and jumps! P A R K O U R!

But parkour just isn’t enough. When you need to one-up the greatest physical accomplishment that a person can ever achieve (like leaping over a trash can), what do you do? You add dubstep. You add so much dubstep that all the people at the masks-only, formal college ballroom gala can’t help but do some herky-jerky “Thriller” moves. Hell yeah.

I know I stumbled across this film for a reason. Sure, I’ve discovered some actual gems in my Sam Neill journey (A Cry in the Dark and Death in Brunswick), but I’ve also discovered MindGamers. This is a movie that continually defies expectations, somehow outdoing itself with every puzzling reveal. This movie is the ultimate WTF—I intentionally did not touch upon a lot because I need people to be as confused and enthralled as I am—and would make for a fantastic group watch should those become a thing again. Or who knows? Maybe MindGamers is right and eventually we’ll be able to link our brains via Wi-Fi and watch MindGamers together while physically apart. Or maybe we’ll just all get really into parkour and dubstep.

Stream MindGamers on Netflix