Movie review: ‘Hypnotic’ will have you questioning reality

Ben Affleck stars in 'Hypnotic'.

Hypnotic (R, 93 mins)

Directed by Robert Rodriguez

Reviewed by Jen Shieff

Not to be confused with the other Hypnotic (2021), which earned rather awful reviews, this Hypnotic (2023) from director and co-writer Robert Rodriguez, is a sci-fi thriller that really works. It’s so engrossing, and at times so visually bizarre, that you may need to watch out as you exit the cinema, in case the ground isn’t really the ground or some warped, twisted version of somebody you think you know comes towards you.

Sort of revisiting his role in Gone Girl, Ben Affleck plays Daniel Rourke, a detective in search of a missing, snatched, or perhaps evaporated person: his daughter, an approximately seven-year-old child called Minnie. Rourke is supported by his colleagues in the police force as he deals with the trauma of Minnie’s loss, and given hypnosis as part of his treatment.

Hypnosis helps Rourke to reconstruct the scene in the park where he last saw Minnie. The weirdo who seems to have been responsible for her disappearance was caught, but Minnie’s whereabouts or burial place is unknown. So far, so Madeleine McCann.

It turns out that the film isn’t about hypnosis as much as it’s about people called ‘hypnotics’, people who have special powers that can be used to bend minds and reshape everything we thought was real. Nothing and nobody can be trusted.

Along with the crazy landscape and people distortions of Inception, there come mystery/thriller elements that bring Memento and Minority Report to mind, revelations about people not being who we think they are, as in The Game or The Truman Show, and a noir style that marks Hypnotic as a descendant of Hitchcock’s Spellbound or Vertigo.

Close close-ups of Ben Affleck, in many ways like a Hitchcock hero, show Rourke’s bewilderment, determination and indignation. Affleck has the looks and jaw-clenching ability to carry all that off convincingly, so convincingly that he has to develop a relationship with his own mind to prevent it from derailing. Like all good heroes, he doesn’t despair and does super-human things, apparently above and beyond the call of duty, to see that all works out well in the end - we hope.

Who’s the bad person behind all the high-speed horrific action scenes, the bank robbing, the shootings, the warping of people’s minds, the “Find Lev Dellrayne” clue that keeps popping up? Essentials for good thrillers are bad people, a mystery to solve before it’s too late and people to save from peril. As the layers of Hypnotic unfold, we ask ourselves again and again, who’s the rotten one? Is it creepy Dellrayne (William Fichtner), or Rourke’s potential love interest Diana Cruz (Alice Braga), or has Minnie been reinvented as some sort of puppeteer? Or is it somebody else altogether?

Rebel Rodriguez, son of Robert, was responsible for the great score, a key to the transporting otherworldliness of the film. Overlook the plot holes; it’s really good entertainment.

Highly recommended

The first person to bring an image or hardcopy of this review to Starlight Cinema in Taupō qualifies for a free ticket to Hypnotic.

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