Movie Spotlight: Then My Mind Walked Away

In April 2020, Jim Roberts and his 72-year-old mother decided to make a horror movie. There wasn’t much else to do. They had $1,500, the ambient dread of a Covid shutdown that felt like it would never end, and a script Roberts had been building in his head. His mom did the practical effects. His dad played the ghost. What started as a short kept growing.

Roberts wrote, directed, and stars as Logan in Then My Mind Walked Away, a folk horror film about the moment evil takes hold and doesn’t let go. When Logan discovers Sarah’s infidelity, he kills her and her lover, then flees with the bodies to his estranged mother’s farm. What he doesn’t realize is that the darkness inside him is about to wake something up. “How one person in a family can ultimately just destroy the whole family,” Roberts says. “That darkness that just causes chaos. How evil can awaken evil.”

The Point of No Return

Roberts is precise about what the title means. “It’s the point of no return,” he says. Once your mind is gone, something else takes over. The film tries to carry the ominous feeling of the Covid shutdown itself, the sense that normal had left and wasn’t coming back. That unease is the atmosphere the film lives in. It wasn’t engineered after the fact. It was built directly from what the world felt like when they were shooting.

Mom Savini

Karen Roberts was 72 when they filmed the majority of this. She co-wrote and produced, and she does the practical special effects for all of Jim’s movies. She has earned a nickname for it: Mom Savini. The film is “real bloody and gory,” which was the point from the start. Jim’s father, James F. Roberts, plays the ghost dad. The film is a family project in both directions, the cast and the crew.

Grossvision

One of the film’s stranger pleasures is Grossvision, an in-universe horror show that flickers on TV during scenes. Roberts has always loved that trick in movies, a fake show inside the world of the story. His friend Tim Gross is a real horror reviewer and show host from Pittsburgh who had acted in Roberts’ films before. Roberts knew he would enjoy playing a horror host. “He nails it,” Roberts says. The character worked so well that Roberts wants to develop Grossvision into an actual series.

The Slow Mutants

Post-production fell to Jorge Delarosa of The Slow Mutants, who also plays Loverboy in the film. Roberts and Delarosa have been collaborating since 2010. Delarosa came aboard late on this project, but his editing shaped what the film became. “He’s a very talented editor and really helped make the movie the best it could be as the project kept evolving,” Roberts says.

What to Know Before You Press Play

Roberts doesn’t oversell it. “I made this movie for $1,500 during Covid with my mom. And it’s weird and bloody. Enjoy.” He wanted a short, slow burn with a sorta crazy ending, lean filmmaking and folk horror tension in the same package. There is no padding. He kept it tight and let the dread build on its own.

Horror

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Streaming now on Relay.