Mindhunters (2004)

Mindhunters (2004) – Full Plot, Cast, and Ending Explained

Mindhunters cast and characters

‘Mindhunters’ is a crime-thriller movie, released in the year 2004, which is directed by  Renny Harlin, who is a renowned film director, producer, and screenwriter from Finland. The main characters in the movie Mindhunters are  Kathryn Morris playing Sara Moore,  LL Cool J playing Gabe Jensen, Jonny Lee Miller playing Lucas Harper, Patricia Velásquez playing Nicole Willis,  Clifton Collins Jr. playing Vince Sherman, Christian Slater playing JD Reston,  Val Kilmer playing Jake Harris, Will Kemp playing Rafe Perry, etc.

Introduction to the movie ‘ Mindhunters’

At the beginning of the movie ‘Mindhunters’, a girl named Saara is dozing off in the dead of night in her car, when she is woken up by a sudden tapping on her car’s window by someone. It is actually her accomplice, JD, who, along with Saara, is from the FBI, a US investigative agency, and is going on a mission.

Saara goes through some pictures of a crime scene, and they discuss the crime that they have to investigate. They reach a spot near a house, which they have to raid, as some girls seem to be trapped there, along with a killer.

When they raid the premises, they find nothing, but some strange things here and there, before they hear a girl scream. They go further down to the basement, where they find two dead girls in a bathtub, along with a dead man with a cigarette still burning in his hand.

Saara tries to contact someone on the walkie-talkie, informing him about the dead people. Just then, someone comes and attacks Saara with a sharp object. A gunfight ensues between JD and that man, and in the process, they all kill each other.

‘Mindhunters’ real scene emerges

After some time, the lights in the house turn on, and we get to know that this was all part of the training for Saara and JD, who are undergoing training as profilers in the FBI.

However, their instructor, Jake Harris, is not satisfied with their performance and instructs them to be more alert and intuitive in the future. He ridicules them for not picking up the hints, like empty cigarette packs and a car outside, which actually pointed to the fact that there could have been another suspect in the house.

In the next scene, Harris is seen with other potential profilers in a room, where he is explaining to them the possibilities that they may encounter in the future while investigating any case. He explains to them that he is preparing them for such eventualities in the future, and his methods are seen as crazy by some of his seniors.

Jake also throws light on their next assignment, where they all have to travel to a small island off the coast of Virginia, known as Oneiga, which is used by the FBI and the military for training purposes. Harris informs them that they will be sent to the island to test their capabilities and teamwork, and how they survive on the island in testing conditions.

The assignment on the island begins

Before that, they visit a bar to enjoy the evening, and some of them also practice their profiling skills by telling about other visitors’ behaviors and habits. But Vince, who is an ex-cop and always in a wheelchair, tells Saara that they are not going to consider him for the position as a profiler.

Vince adds that he himself has read the recommendation list of the instructor, Jake Harris, at his office. Vince also informs Saara that she does not feature in the recommended list of the profilers.

The group of seven profilers, along with Jake Harris, heads towards the island of Oneiga in a helicopter. They are also joined by Detective Gabe Jenson, who is the resident profiler and has been assigned the duty by the seniors to check how Harris works. But as per Harris, Gabe will be there just to observe things and not participate in any of the exercises.

They reach the island, which is just a simulation of a town and has been built by the Navy Seals for the war game exercises. It comprises a full-fledged town, having dummy markets, shopping areas, food courts, roads, traffic signals, etc., and the military uses it for training the cadres.

The island is full of surprises

The island has an office fitted with all sorts of gadgetry and infrastructure to be used by the trainees. Harris takes them through every part of the island and shows them the area and the things that they can utilize there.

Harris informs the team that they will be isolated and forgotten by the outside world, and they will have to manage their survival by themselves. The team is expected to prepare the profile of a serial killer who has supposedly committed a murder on the island.

All the team members have special individual talents, which they are expected to utilize on the island. JD is being assigned the job to head the team and oversee the operations.

Teams start to develop camaraderie

Harris leaves, and the team starts to know each other better, to make a good team. Saara and Lucas start to share a bond, as both are unhappy in their own lives. Saara reveals to Lucas that she is sad because Harris is not going to select her as a profiler, whereas Lucas tells her that he lost his parents in his childhood.

In due course of time, it is revealed that every one of them has some special talent or skill, which they prove from time to time. One day, Saara finds a dead cat hanging, which has been embedded with a broken watch, depicting the time as 10 o’clock, which makes them believe that it is some warning sign for them.

The next morning, they start to explore the island in order to find any clues about the crime scene, for which they are here as profilers. They enter a dummy restaurant and find the simulation of the exact ambience there, with dummies of people, food, and accessories. Even a dummy cigarette machine has been kept there, which tempts Nicole as she is addicted to cigarettes.

However, when they all keep searching in all directions, Vince alerts everyone to something. When they all go inside, they find a simulation of a murder with a dummy body hanging from the ceiling, and they start their investigations into it. Vince rues the fact that they were not allowed to bring their guns with them.

JD, who is in charge of the entire team, starts to look for clues nearby, and just then, an alarm is set on, which plays a song on the clock in the room. JD presses the stop button to stop it, but this triggers some mechanism that goes on for some time, and ultimately results in an opening of the mouth of a cylinder, containing liquid nitrogen.

The first casualty on the island takes place

The mouth of the cylinder opens towards JD and releases the liquid nitrogen, while his entire body gets frozen down, thereby killing him. When they check the time, it is exactly 10 o’clock, matching the time the broken watch from the dead cat had shown.

The team now understands that JD has been murdered by someone present on the island itself. When they are discussing this, they see another broken watch, depicting the time 12 o’clock. The trainees discuss that it is another hint that someone may be killed at this time.

All of them rush towards the wooden bridge, which has a boat tied to it, to escape from there. But when they are midway on the bridge, the sensors on the bridge trigger a bomb, which was fitted on the boat, and the boat is blasted into pieces.

While Vince is watching from a distance, all of the other members are thrown into the water. However, all of them swim back, while Lucas saves Saara, who was about to drown. They are confused about whether Harris wants to kill them, but are not sure, as Harris does not seem to be that sort of a person, according to the team.

Vince takes out his gun from the wheelchair to everyone’s surprise and tells everyone that he has brought his gun for safety purposes. Everyone rushes towards the ammunition room and takes with them whatever they can. Saara takes out the broken pieces resulting from the blast from the body of Lucas and notices the time on the clock as 11:40, which means only 20 minutes are left.

Suspicion starts to develop on Lucas

When they are all at the dining table having coffee and discussing the murder, Lucas comes there and points his gun toward Gabe. Lucas tells everyone that he has found some maps of the island in Gabe’s room.

All of them take out their guns, point toward Gabe, and ask him to surrender. The area maps are not supposed to be in anyone’s possession, since it is a training camp. But just then, Gabe loses consciousness and falls down, and after that, everyone in the room also gets unconscious and falls down.

As soon as Gabe comes to his senses, he gets handcuffed by Bobby. Others, too, start to gain consciousness and start to blame Gabe for JD’s death. Gabe tries to defend himself, but no one listens to him. They also try to enquire from him what he had mixed in their coffee so that everybody got unconscious. Gabe argues that it was Rafe who made the coffee.

Next, Rafe is killed on the island

When they try to confront Rafe, who is sitting on the chair with his head on the table, they are shocked to find Rafe’s head coming off his body with a slight touch. Saara tells them that there is no blood left in him, as he has been killed by draining away the entire blood from his body. They find some numbers written by blood on the glass there, and try to figure out what that means.

At the same time, the team notices a couple of watches depicting a time of 6 o’clock. They conclude that it means that there will be two casualties at the time, as shown on the watch. When Lucas checks his watch, it shows 5:45, which means there are only 15 minutes left for another spate of killings.

They all tie Gabe with the pipe fitted on the wall, and themselves go out to check the numbers written on the wall. However, Vince is left with Gabe and instructed by the team to keep a watch on him, while Gabe is given 15 minutes to provide them with all the information he has about the killings.

The lights are supposedly the culprits, as per them

While the future profilers are trying to figure out the mystery, they conclude that it has to do with lights. They turn the lights off and find some glowing signs on the jackets of each other.

After taking off their jackets, they find the letters A, O, R, and T marked on them by some glowing powder, but they are not able to solve the meaning of these letters. Bobby checks his watch, which shows 6 o’clock.

Here, Vince hears a sound outside and ventures out to find who is outside the room. Just then, the electric wires from the roof come off. At the same time, the water pipes burst due to intense water pressure. This results in the current from the broken live wires running all over the place, due to the electricity coming into contact with water.

Vince just manages to grab a small pipe with difficulty, leaving his wheelchair behind. Gabe asks Vince to give him the gun so that he can free himself from handcuffs and switch the power off at the circuit breaker. Vince first hesitates, but after understanding that he has no other alternative left, he throws the gun at Gabe.

After getting the gun, Gabe first sets himself free and then fires bullets into the wall to make holes in it. He steps his foot into these holes and reaches the main switchboard. Just when Vince is about to slip off the pipe, Gabe manages to turn the switch off.

Bobby is hit by the arrows

Other members of the team also arrive there, and Vince tells them that Gabe has saved his life. Bobby manages to turn off the water pressure plates using his technical skills, but a booby trap goes off, and he gets hit by arrows, which are planted by the killer. Then they find some more jackets again, and so the team tries to figure out the codes written on them, along with the codes found on the jackets previously.

The entire team tries to decipher the meaning of the alphabet found on them. Ultimately, Vince explains to them that the letters mean Croatoan, and tells a story that this island exists on the northern banks of North Carolina.

The island is one of those island sites that were the first islands settled by the Europeans. In the 16th century, a ship containing refugees was set off by the Englishmen to these islands to colonize them for the Englishmen.

Over 100 refugees settled on Roanoke Island, but when a supply ship came to the island after two years, it found no trace of any mankind nor any clue about them, as the entire Island had vanished from there. Only a single word was seen carved in a tree, and that word was Croatoan.

They all conclude that the killer has marked the jackets with the letters of the word Croatoan, to draw parallels with the island that vanished, and which is what he wants to do with this island too.

They start to investigate more deeply

They start to investigate every aspect there, by using all the resources present on the island, which included a fully computerized forensics lab and a database facility. They also check the material found on the jackets and the blood samples, wherever they had found them.

A blood sample was found on Rafe’s nail, which implied that Rafe had a scuffle with the killer before being killed by him. The trainees test the blood samples of all team members present there, and wait for the results.

Saara seems to be the culprit

Everyone gets shocked to find that the samples taken from the crime scene are being matched with Saara, although Lucas supports Saara and does not believe she can do this.

Nicole gets angry and wants to kill Saara, but the other members stop her. She goes out in anger, pointing a gun at everyone, saying that there is a killer amongst them, and she wants to get out of that place. Saara tells other members that the killer is doing this to prove his superiority, and there is nothing personal.

As per Saara, the killer has, in fact, been profiling the trainee profilers and has killed others, only after thoroughly analyzing their skills and weaknesses.

Saara adds that there is nothing random here, and everyone got killed due to their weakness. She explains that JD was killed because he always stayed ahead and at the forefront. Rafe was mad after coffee only, and Bobby always had a knack for fixing things.

Next, Nicole is killed by her own mistake

As Saara is explaining this, Nicole finds a cigarette and can’t resist the urge to smoke it. But it is, in fact, an acid-filled cigarette, which soon kills her after she smokes it. As they are confused about all this, they hear the voice of Harris mocking them for being losers, through the speakers all over the island.

They try to go out to find Harris by following the voice from the speakers, but Gabe ties Vince’s wheelchair to the table as Vince refuses to go out. Saara advises Vince to hide for some time, but Vince is uneasy because he has no bullets left. Gabe, Saara, and Lucas venture out to find Harris, while Vince enters a morgue and gets himself new bullets from Rafe’s dead body, as his gun had no bullets left.

Harris, too, is killed, and the mystery deepens more

Although they get a feeling that Harris has done all this, after some time, they find Harris, along with two FBI agents, dead in a room. Harris was hung from the ceiling by the wires, just like a puppet attached to strings.

This meant that Harris had not left the island, even though he pretended so, but was killed later by someone else. They see three watches on Harris’s hand showing the current time, meaning that three people are to be killed right now.

Gabe and Lucas point guns at each other, as no one is trustworthy in these conditions. Suddenly, the lights go off, and they rush outside and fire indiscriminately in all directions, trying to kill the killer who may be hiding somewhere.

Saara hides below a bus, but Lucas is hit by the bullets from Gabe. While Gabe tries to find Saara on the bus, she runs away from there.

Vince gets killed by his own gun

Here, Vince, while trying to board the lift, sees someone and shoots at him, but his gun is actually rigged, and the bullet gets fired from the back of his gun towards him only, thus killing him instantly.

When Saara reaches the 2nd floor, she sees Vince’s dead body, and she comments that Vince was killed due to his passion for keeping his gun with him all the time. Just then, Gabe reaches there and hits Saara, as both Saara and Gabe blame each other for the killings.

Suddenly, Lucas gets into the picture, and both Gabe and Lucas have a fight. After hitting and injuring each other, both of them fall from a height. As a result, both of them land on the stairs below and are badly injured.

Gabe tries to get up, but Saara hits him with a cylinder and helps Lucas get up from the stairs. Saara is relieved that Lucas is fine when Lucas shows her his bulletproof jacket, which saved his life.

Saara tells Lucas that she had set the main clock 15 minutes backward, since the killer always plays with time and thus would definitely have tried to set it right. As per Saara, the killer wanted all the trainees to know about the time of their death, as he got pleasure from their suffering.

Saara reveals that she may have had the culprit

Saara reveals that she has put that fluorescent powder on the clock, which was found on the jackets of everyone. She did this as the powder would get stuck on the killer’s fingers while adjusting the time of the clock.

Saara examines the unconscious Gabe’s hands through the sensor, but there is no glow. However, when she accidentally takes the sensor toward Lucas, who is checking his own hands, the powder on his hands is prominently visible and glowing.

Now, the real culprit emerges

It means that it is Lucas who is the actual culprit and the mastermind of the killings. Lucas confesses to his crimes in front of Saara and reveals that he has been a murderer since childhood and has even killed his parents. Lucas tells Saara that when they were busy profiling others, he was studying them and their habits and weaknesses.

Lucas continues that, showing sympathy to them at times and scaring them the other times, was a part of his strategy to trick them into his trap. He says to Saara that getting prey is hard, but you guys were quite easy to overpower mentally.

Lucas reveals that the coffee break worked as a good breather for him to strategize things. He goes on to tell Saara that all of her team members were so predictable since they didn’t work on their weaknesses or didn’t improve upon them, and that is why they lost their lives.

Lucas tries to kill Saara

Saara tries to run since Lucas is now after her life, but Lucas finds her and pushes her into the water. Lucas tries to drown her, as he knows that she is scared of water. Saara resists him and manages to push Lucas also into the water. Saara takes a gun out of the pocket of a drowned body in the water.

Both Lucas and Saara start shooting at each other in the water, but the bullets do not reach them. Both go upwards and wait for each other underneath the water to come out so that they can fire bullets at the other.

In the end, Lucas is neutralized by Saara

After some time, Lucas needs to come out of the water due to suffocation, but Saara resists and stays in the water. As soon as Lucas comes out, Saara fires a bullet that hits Lucas. Still, he comes out and tells Saara that every piece of evidence is against her, as they have her fingerprints everywhere.

Just then, Gabe, who is still alive, reaches there and throws a watch towards Lucas, and tells him that his time is up. Lucas tries to pick up the gun, but Saara shoots and kills him.

In the ending scene of the Mindhunters, they are seen flagging down a helicopter, and Saara asks Gabe whether she can make a good profiler. Gabe asks Saara, When is the situation under control, to which Saara replies, When we reach home and the ‘Mindhunters’ movie ends.

Some of the FAQ’s of the movie ‘Mindhunters’