Superhuman: The Invisible Made Visible (2020), written and directed by Caroline Cory

Writing a review is straightforward. Beginning, middle and end. Often in the shape of a triangle or baggy diamond—if you get too wordy—before you reach your conclusion. You become an expert in your field with a certain gravitas. The problem here is I can think two (or more things) at once. Cognitive dissonance is a way of life for Catholics, with virgin births, saints, angels and demons, and life ever after. Heaven and hell is up for grabs, literally and metaphorically.

Mr Jordan, my primary seven teacher, for example, told us that a haggis was a wee creature with one  leg shorter than another so he could run uphill. He drew what a haggis looked like on the blackboard, and sure enough, one leg was shorter than the other. When I’m up the Old Kilpatrick Hills I still look out for haggis men showing their bum as they run uphill.

Similarly, I remember the clip showing how the Italian spaghetti crop had failed. Sure enough, on Nationwide, they showed stringy bits of pasta falling from the pasta plant. I wasn’t overly concerned, because I’m a potato man. The average potato farmer before the Great Famine ate 14lbs of potatoes a day, but I ate more than that.

Uri Geller said he was taken up in a spaceship, and that allowed him to start clocks and bend spoons. He teleported to every chat show in the world simultaneously and showed how it was done. All over the world we could hear the sound of ticking clocks and spoons went wonky for the Israeli and his followers. He even had a car with spoons attached to show how much money he’d made. Secretly, I knew he’d never be able to keep it clean, because jet wash hadn’t been invented.  Spoon bending didn’t work for me, but that didn’t mean I didn’t believe him. I just was made of the wrong kind of stuff.  

I was an avid reader of books like Colin Wilson’s The Occult. Sure it had me shitting my pants. But there was a bit of envy, I admit that. Nothing would teleport, unless I kicked it with my size ten boots. I couldn’t read people’s thoughts, or get girls to undress by staring at them. Mind-bending just didn’t work for me. And I could only see if I put my specs on. I was familiar with all the hoo-ha. Ironically there’s a film on BBC 2 tonight that encapsulates this theme that I’ll watch and laugh at. Dramatised and directed by George Clooney, based on a book by Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare at Goats.

It’s utterly ridiculous. Superhuman is filled with marvellous people with shiny white teeth. No fat people. No black people. People with straight hair. People we can trust.

Let’s start with remote viewing. Actress Naomi Grossman gets a few dos and don’ts from a former member of the groups mocked by Ronson and Clooney. She’s able to locate and draw things such as a circus carousel Caroline Cory was seeing and sitting on. Not only is Grossman able to describe these artefacts, she can feel them too, rough or smooth, big or small.

Grossman’s ex-military CIA man is able to tell us the viewers, how during Jimmy Carter’s Presidency they planned to construct bunkers in which to launch IBM missiles at the USSR, but not all would have nuclear missiles. They’d move the silos about to fool the Russians, so they could get first strike (or second strike—which is called the end of the world). But those trained in remote location viewing where able to tell with almost 100% accuracy whether the silos were armed or not. President Carter shelved the plan.

The problem with following this logic is the follow-up experiment in which Cory tried to block where she was, and Grossman was unable to locate her. If such a unit of the American army did exist (and I’m sure it did) then it would have therefore been relatively easy to block remote viewers from other nations viewing something they didn’t want to see. In this case, where’s Wally, with nuclear missiles able to blow up our planet?  

In other experiments Cory is able to change the Ph balance of a substrate. Make it more alkaline by thinking about it, by willing it. A bit like Uri Gellar, but without the spoons. In terms of biochemistry, proof positive of how you think influence how your body reacts. Thinking yourself better, or healthy, works is the message.

Cory also shows telekinesis at work. There’s no Stephen King Carrie moment: she’s not drenched in pig’s blood, nor does she pick up cars and hurl them at those that can’t take a joke, or take no for an answer. Cory simply sets a lightweight arrow inside a glass vacuum spinning. Nothing spectacular, but the fall of how we understand physics works (don’t ask me, I failed first-year secondary school physics).

Actor Corey Feldman gets in on the act. Two voice recorders are placed next to each other. One has the batteries taken out. Yet, information is somehow passed from the voice recorder with batteries to the one with no batteries. A message from the other side, what nineteen century scientists called the ether. It just doesn’t make sense.

These are mere trinkets and tricks (even if they’re not). The finale is spectacular. Children that can read books through blindfolds Run around with blindfolds. Go shopping, blind. Play table-tennis, and other ball games, blind. Truly, a wow moment. Either it’s a setup, or it isn’t. I’m still undecided. Certainly, Caroline Cory has a lot of very beautiful people doing strange things. But that’s not as spectacular as the failed pasta crop, because I love pasta now. One sure thing during Holy Week, as I search for my relic of the one true cross sold to me by a genuine monk, who wouldn’t tell me any lies, Cory’s trinkets are sure to sell like wildfire. I’m sure there’s courses up and running. How not to get to heaven but how to dip your pockets. Catholics, like me, have been schooled in it. Everything miraculous ends in tears or the end of the world. Don’t crucify me for telling me what you already know.