Mind Body & Soul (2024)

Mind Body & Soul

Has anyone in the horror found footage subgenre ever thought, “You know what we need? An extended yoga influencer video from hell”? Like it or not, that’s what writer/director duo Alex Henes and Matthew Merenda unleash with Mind Body Spirit. The best part of this feature is by far the lead performance by Sarah J. Bartholomew she seems down for whatever.

This misguided movie drags on way too long too often, so an 88-minute runtime feels more like two hours. Props for using minimal “software glitches,” but points off for never letting us escape the loading circle and having faux “ad” breaks every five minutes. Mind Body Spirit has about as much depth as a vapid self-help influencer; strictly for rabid found footage fans only.

I’ve seen this film labeled as a screenlife movie in several places; if you’re unfamiliar, that means it takes place entirely on someone’s computer screen. It starts with someone going into the Far Corner Video Archive and searching for this film’s title before selecting it and watching it. That’s all there really is to it no V/H/S style wraparound segment or anything happening on a computer screen at any point beyond those opening moments.

Our main character Anya (Bartholomew) greets us from her yoga mat, where she says she’ll help us recharge our minds and reclaim our bodies. Anya lacks the typical influencer quality that some of her colleagues seem to possess pretty obviously right away though Kenzi (Madi Bready) does make a couple appearances at Anya’s home to collaborate with her, their approaches don’t appear to have similar structures on any level.

Anya finds a hidden pantry at her grandma’s apartment and inside sees a dusty bookshelf with equally dusty sandbags around it indicating some kind of ritual space or something like that I didn’t take notes while I watched this movie. Instead of staying the hell away, Anya figures that her grandma was a healer too or something I don’t know man this movie is wild. It definitely has its way with a sparsely decorated space as far as camera trickery goes — there’s one constant full spin around the room that I first saw used in this medium via Paranormal Activity 3‘s oscillating fan gag and really liked; other than that, we see Anya video chat with her mom several times but she never does anything for Anya physically ever.

Anya decides to do something called “the joining” in order to achieve what she calls an ultimate “spiritual centering” which she says will join back together the soul and body or some shit like that idk man I don’t think this movie is very good. Of course, cataloguing all of it for her indeterminate amount of followers will also be mandatory I guess.

A lot of stuff here is under baked including the social media element, and any type of insight into Anya beyond what she films for content. Each step of “the joining” gets progressively weirder and nastier by the second, so naturally it’s kind of hard to figure out why she keeps doing them. She doesn’t seem to have moments where she doubts the nature of what she’s following at any point either idk man this movie is not great. If I was choking up blood during a “throat cleanse,” I would probably go seek professional help immediately but hey that’s just me apparently.

As Anya’s physical condition worsens, the camera moves in strange ways around her. One of the few chilling images, a jump scare with an old woman on a chair is barely that. There are no surprises when it comes to where we’re headed, because this is too obvious. Mind Body Spirit is a very direct horror game as well as being a character piece for an increasingly unhinged Anya. Sarah J. Bartholomew does great work as the only focus here; therefore, skip this instructional lifestyle horror and treat it like a bothersome ad that doesn’t know when to quit because of its uninteresting visuals and bare narrative bones.

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