Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) is a secret government agent whose son (Andrew Stevens) has extraordinary psychic gifts, which make the young man the target of a kidnapping plot hatched by Peter's duplicitous colleague, Ben Childress (John Cassavetes). Peter spends eleven months in a desperate search for his son, while cleverly evading Childress, who wants him dead. In that time, Childress and team have done their best to harness the psychic teenager's powers; but giving him luxuries, and even an elegant doctor (Fiona Lewis) as a mistress, have only turned him into a mercurial egomaniac with a violent temper. Meanwhile, another teenager with psychic gifts (Amy Irving) takes part in a two-week study at a psi research center, where she comes to the attention Peter's lover (Carrie Snodgress), who also acts as his mole. Childress learns of this young woman, too, and is eager to take control of a second extraordinary talent.
Brian De Palma, working with a script adapted by John Farris from his own novel, directs a terrific supernatural thriller. Kirk Douglas, in a typically urgent and larger-than-life performance, helps to pull us into the story and lead us to care about the outcome. De Palma's vivid techniques draw us in further, for once, rather than call attention to themselves, until a slightly regrettable slow-motion sequence (one of his signature tricks with an uneven success rate) and a very regrettable gross-out postscript, which is so silly and cynical that it almost seems to mock us for having given a damn about the characters.
Brian De Palma, working with a script adapted by John Farris from his own novel, directs a terrific supernatural thriller. Kirk Douglas, in a typically urgent and larger-than-life performance, helps to pull us into the story and lead us to care about the outcome. De Palma's vivid techniques draw us in further, for once, rather than call attention to themselves, until a slightly regrettable slow-motion sequence (one of his signature tricks with an uneven success rate) and a very regrettable gross-out postscript, which is so silly and cynical that it almost seems to mock us for having given a damn about the characters.