The Big Picture

Mind Body Spirit
is a found footage horror that pokes fun at wellness influencers.
The film captures isolation and the descent into darkness well, though some other elements don’t quite land.

Mind Body Spirit
is best when pushing boundaries, with Bartholomew’s performance never wavering.

Mind Body Spirit, the feature horror debut by filmmakers Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda, is not the first film this year to feel like it’s tapping into similar things as Ari Aster’s Hereditary. However, it is the only one thus far to involve so much yoga alongside its story about familial trauma and how it gets passed down. This could easily sound like a joke, but Mind Body Spirit is a found footage horror that plays things mostly straight beyond a few gags about influencers. This is both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that it never takes things quite far enough to be as sly a reflection of our modern digital lives as something like the recent The Influencer. Instead, its blessings come in the more supernatural dark delights, operating in the vein of something like Rob Savage’s Host with a slight hint of the livestream horror Deadstream.

Mind Body Spirit (2023) Mind Body Spirit follows Anya, an aspiring yoga influencer, as she embarks on a ritual practice left behind by her estranged grandmother. What starts as a spiritual self-help guide quickly evolves into something much more sinister. As Anya becomes obsessed with the mysterious power of the practice, she unwittingly unleashes an otherworldly entity that begins to take control of her life — and her videos. Now Anya must race to unlock the truth, before her descent into madness threatens to consume her mind, body and spirit. Release Date May 7, 2024 Director Alex Henes , Matthew Merenda Cast Sarah J. Bartholomew , Madi Bready , KJ Flahive , Anna Knigge , Kristi Noory Runtime 85 Minutes Writers Topher Hendricks , Alex Henes , Matthew Merenda Studio(s) Art Brut Films , Welcome Villain Films

These are all promising points of comparison and fans of those other movies will likely be tickled by much of Mind Body Spirit. What must then also be said is that it isn’t quite as good as any of its predecessors that it draws from in both theme and form. While many found footage movies operate in confined spaces, this frequently feels restricting rather than fully claustrophobic here. There is still some smashing fun to be had the longer it goes on, but its persistent limitations dampen the dread. Where something like We’re All Going to the World’s Faircaptured the loneliness and liberation of the Internet, this only skims along the surface. This might be an unfair comparison to make, as Mind Body Spirit is more interested in the eerie than the existential, though it still can’t quite hit as hard as it could have.

What Is ‘Mind Body Spirit’ About?

This all begins with a computer sitting on a table. It has a playlist of videos that seem to have been archived that we will spend the film watching. The one making these videos is Anya, played by a wonderfully sincere and sinister Sarah J. Bartholomew, who is attempting to become a yoga influencer. Through early scenes of her speaking directly to the camera, we learn that her life has recently changed quite significantly as she moved to the home of her late grandmother to get a fresh start. It is there that she begins making videos that initially are awkward before becoming more unsettling. Anya is desperately trying to create an online presence for herself and is willing to do whatever it takes to do it.

This leads her to overlook some major warning signs that something is amiss in the house. The thing that consumes her day-to-day is making videos that are genuine and more sincere, though she is struggling to figure out how to do it. When she discovers her grandmother’s diary, she decides this will be her way of expressing herself and finding out who she really is. Little does she know that the text she is diving into is not about mindfulness and is a menacing ritual that she is unwittingly taking part in.

Related ‘The Coffee Table’ Review: ‘Hereditary’s Head Trauma Has Nothing On This Horror Film I think I’m going to go throw up now.

The film is then about isolation and the descent of Anya into darkness. We observe her becoming more and more emaciated as something seems to be taking control of her body. Some visual effects take you out of key scenes, including one surrounding a string being swallowed, but Bartholomew’s performance helps to smooth over some of the flaws. You may find yourself questioning why we are seeing some things, such as occasional video calls with her mother Lenka (Anna Knigge) or moments where she is laying in her bed that don’t seem to be being recorded, but the bigger issue is how some of the scenes are shot.

One scene where her influencer friend Kenzi (Madi Bready) comes over to make a video with Anya is understandably shot in a wide so that viewers can see the exercise they do, but it still feels a little distancing. Where something like Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming Presence was able to find a greater variety of perspectives in a single house, Mind Body Spirit often falls back on the same tricks. The camera will occasionally rotate around to show us what is lurking in a room or go mobile as we discover hidden parts of the house, though much of it remains static.

‘Mind Body Spirit’ Is a Horror Film Trying to Get Under Your Skin

Sometimes, this can cut a bit deeper, like when Anya speaks directly to us while sitting at a desk about her insecurities just as her door begins to open behind her. This is often undercut by ads, some with Kenzi and one with a random guy talking about a nonsense drink he’s trying to sell, sacrificing scares for silliness. The ads do a fine job of mimicking the type of empty influencers Anya doesn’t want to be, but this light skewering still comes with a cost. Scenes that felt like they were building to something disturbing are cut short, lacking the patience to let them get under our skin. Even one disquieting moment where Anya speaks in a room of candles with a wild look in her eyes ends abruptly. It’s as if there was more to the scene that was ripped away, so we could go back to scenes where we are again at a distance. It doesn’t doom the film entirely, but it does hold it back from its full potential.

Much like Anya speaks about hollowing out herself for something else to move on in, the best parts of the film come once this process starts to take hold. Once we get past the more clunky string scene, Mind Body Spirit starts to find more chilling territory. From a nighttime excursion where the camera drifts around the house to a confessional scene the next morning where we hear the creeping fear turning to obsession in Anya’s voice, these escalations kick the experience up a notch. A lot of this comes down to Bartholomew’s performance, which never wavers even when the film frequently does. She gives us insights into her character more naturally than some of the occasionally forced dialogue, showing us glimpses of her increasingly fractured mind through an embodied performance. Even when the film doesn’t fully capture the spirit, the spell she casts gets awfully close.

Mind Body Spirit (2023) REVIEWMind Body Spirit is a fine found footage horror film that still can’t hit as hard as it could have.ProsEven as the film wavers a bit, Sarah J. Bartholomew never does as she gives a performance that casts a strong spell.Once we get closer to the end, the film gets more chilling and leaves behind some of the more clunky elements.The film does a fine job of mimicking the ads of influencers, lightly skewering them here and there. ConsThe film occasionally sacrifices scares for silliness.Some of the way the film is shot, shaky effects, and forced dialogue hold things back.

Mind Body Spirit is now available to stream on VOD in the U.S.

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