Like Minds

When a film's tagline reads "A thousand-year-old secret leads to murder" and boasts "Two evil geniuses too brilliant to be caught", alarm bells start ringing. Yet, with such successes as Muriel's Wedding and Little Miss Sunshine under her belt, anything with Toni Collette is worth looking at. Or so I thought. What possessed the actress to participate in Like Minds is a mystery far more intriguing than the plot itself. Filmed in England and Australia, the film begins with Collette in the role of a forensic psychologist interviewing Alex, an irritatingly stuck up public schoolboy, about his suspected role in the deaths of two of his schoolfriends. The rest is devoted to what actually happened, not that anyone cares very much. Alex had been forced to share a room with Nigel, who had a spooky obsession with taxidermy, and the two soon discover that they share an entirely unbelievable mental connection. An innocent schoolgirl is gruesomely murdered and so are Nigel's parents. From start to finish, this is an unpleasant and pointless waste of an evening.

* Rosemary Behan