Hypnotic

I don’t count myself as a particular fan of Robert Rodriguez. Admittedly, I have a few gaps in my education on him, such as El Mariachi and Desperado and Planet Terror. But of the five I’ve seen, I only really liked Sin City. In the others, his sense of humor and storytelling and pacing just don’t do it for me. He has some interesting ideas, that’s undeniable. But it feels notable that the only one I liked is an adaptation of an existing work.

Hypnotic is another original screenplay by Rodriguez. It finds Daniel Rourke (Ben Affleck) struggling to get over the loss of his daughter Minnie (Hala Finley), who’s been missing for some time (months, I think?) after being kidnapped at the park. After returning to work, a strange bank robbery leads him to discover the world of “hypnotics”, who can cause strangers to carry out elaborate acts on their behalf with just a few words. It appears that a powerful hypnotic named Del Rayne (William Fichtner) is behind behind the disappearance, so Rourke must peel back the layers to get to her. And what he finds may just rock his whole world…

From that premise, I’m on board. I’m intrigued how this is going to play out, the cat and mouse game, some basic explanation of how it works and the limitations, and where Rourke fits into it. It seems like a fun, somewhat scary time. The concept of mind control is something I find incredibly unsettling, so this can also go in a very dark direction. Of course, in that space you’re going toe to toe with The Purple Man from season 1 of Jessica Jones, quite possibly the most disturbing villain ever. But there’s room to play with it and do something interesting.

Unfortunately, this pretty quickly tells us how bland it’s going to be. There’s some heavy handed VO as he explains to his therapist that his daughter was kidnapped from right in front of him, which is even worse once we learn it was the biggest news story in Austin when it happened. And that inclination to explain every little thing in the most verbose and clunky way possible continues throughout the entire film, all the way through the ending. We get long exposition dumps constantly as the ground shifts under our feet, telling us the new rules. Although it’s not like any of it matters, since once we start seeing hypnotics in action, the rules go right out the window.

The core thing we learn about hypnotics is they physically alter how your brain sees the world, such that the action they want you to take seems like the only reasonable thing to do. Which, sure. But the few times we see the world from the POV of someone under the spell of a hypnotic, the world just looks fuzzy, and some of it doubles back on itself a la Doctor Strange. Even worse, every time we see an established character under the influence of a hypnotic, they’re clearly fighting it as if they don’t have control over their body. Ya know, like they’re being mind controlled, even as the movie very clearly says that’s not it. So the actually ability has not been well thought through.

Which isn’t great of course, but isn’t necessarily a death knell. However, it’s indicative of the whole film. Nothing feels planned: the character motivations keep changing, some of the the action set pieces look quite haphazard, and none of the reveals are satisfying. This movie has a handful of twists, which is unsurprising given the vibe set out up top. You’ll probably guess at least the broad strokes pretty quickly. But even looking for them, there’s no foreshadowing of what’s going on, no Easter eggs or symbolism. Even once we hit a section where the movie openly acknowledges what took place in the first act or so, it refuses to show you anything weird or significant or different. They play it exactly the same, yet it has a different outcome…just because.

As such, none of them feel satisfying in the least, and most are pretty stupid. They’re unmotivated and come out of nowhere, and instead of adding anything to the story and themes they just add complexity and convolution. You can almost feel Rodriguez obsessively watching Inception and The Village on loop, and thinking “I can do better than that!'“ Turns out, no.

It doesn’t feel like Rodriguez is respecting his audience here. Along with aforementioned exposition, there are quite a few times we see a scene a second time, just to make sure we got it. And all along, dialog to explain it to us. But the cardinal sin, one that very often comes with a bad movie, is that score. It’s not terrible on its own, but its deployment awful. It’s basically constant, and constantly signals tension and importance. In so many ways, the movie doesn’t trust itself to succeed, and so it throws other elements at the wall in the hopes one will do it for you.

The dialog is awful, even when it’s not exposition. It’s stilted and cliched and when it’s trying to be over the top it just comes across as silly. I’m not convinced anyone in this film is a human being; has The Congress finally come to pass? If so, something went wrong with poor Ben, who just sleepwalks through the whole thing, regretting his decision to be in this pile of crap every single moment he’s on screen. His acting overall is quite bad, but his line readings are next level awful. Alice Braga is fine. Fichtner is pretty good, although I have no clue what in the hell that run is.

There’s just nothing here. Nothing over the top really lands, no one looks like they’re having fun, the central idea’s execution and visuals is lacking, and the plot is nonsense. And after all that, they had the absolute gall to tease a sequel in a mid-credits scene!

Save your time and money and enthusiastically skip it.