Eavesdropper is a political/medical thriller from first-time writer/director Andrew Bakalar. The premise for the story surrounds some ongoing research funded by the U.S. Government regarding aural reconstruction. Not only is work being done to help patients with hearing loss restore their sense of sound, but also with enhancements that help the patient pick up broader electro-acoustic waves transmitted from brain activity. In short, they're trying to condition people to not just read minds, but literally hear them.
Liza (played by Lucy Jenner) has recently become deaf, the result of a mugging gone awry, when the robber shot her husband at point blank range--but doing so while holding her captive and with the firearm going off directly next to her ears. She is befriended by Grant (John J. York), a case-worker at a halfway house where she is recovering. Through her doctor, she is referred to a hearing institute (the researchers in charge are played by Star Trek's John De Lancie and George Takei) that is testing out an experimental procedure to restore hearing. Unbeknownst to Liza, the study has so far resulted in disastrous side effects for all the other patients, as well as lab animals. She agrees to go through with the treatment, and soon wakes up from the operation with her hearing restored.
Sort of.
Not only can she once again hear the natural world around her, but she finds she can also pick up the internal dialogue of people close by which is being transmitted as brain waves. After some digging around, she soon discovers that she is the sole survivor of this treatment, which ultimately causes other patients to go crazy and commit suicide. For whatever reason, she alone has been able to control this anomaly. As the doomed research is forced underground, to now be funded by the government for their own purposes, she is offered a position to use this ability to help assist in select cases. She reluctantly accepts the new job.
As you can well imagine with any movie involving a government cover up, things quickly become... well, more complicated.
Eavesdropper is somewhat of a straight-to-video release, although it has had some showing recently on television, on the Lifetime channel, under its original title of Patient 14. The cast includes mostly B- and C-list actors, as well as a few newcomers, and generally succeeds in rising above the obvious limitations of its budget. Two of the leads, most notably Lucy Jenner and John De Lancie, give sufficiently strong performances, as do a couple of lesser known actors in supporting roles. The rest of the cast tend to hover in the "daytime soap opera" level of quality, but none to the point of distraction (although the lead actor, Costas Mandylor, certainly tries his best).
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