Hypnotic Review

Hypnotic is a mind-bending sci-thriller that cult filmmaker Robert Rodriguez had written back in 2002.

Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) is an Austin Police Detective whose daughter has been kidnapped and murdered. He gets a tip off that a bank is about to be robbed. This case is stranger than Rourke expected since the perpetrator, “Dellrayne” (William Fichtner) has mind control powers and the safety deposit box he planned to rob had a picture of Danny’s daughter. Danny soon finds himself in a web of conspiracies involving people with psychic powers and a secret government agency.

Rodriguez has had an interesting career as a filmmaker. He is known for low budget filmmaking, he literally wrote the book on it with Rebel Without A Crew which was about his experience making his debut film, El Mariachi. He has made entertaining cult films like From Dusk till Dawn and Sin City, family friendly fare with the Spy Kids franchise and has been linked to franchise films like X-Men. Recently Rodriguez has made more mainstream projects: he made Alita: Battle Angel based on James Cameron’s screenplay, and he directed episodes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.

With Hypnotic Rodriguez was trying to channel Christopher Nolan. Nolan’s known as a celebrated filmmaker who made films like Inception and Tenet, thrillers with a sci-fi twist. Rodriguez was attempting something similar with Hypnotic since it starts off as a standard thriller and the sci-fi element slowly escalates. Also like a Nolan film, Hypnotic aimed to be a twisty thriller where new information was constantly revealed and there were reality bending events. A bike chase in Mexico where buildings were moving and Alice Braga’s character saying the villain was manipulating what they saw felt like something from Inception.

Hypnotic did have a good hook where a cop finds out someone else might have been with their daughter’s murder. The film opened a bit like Face/Off where it showed a father in the park when tragedy strikes. The grand 2.39:1 aspect ratio and the location shooting did also give a ‘90s feel. Hypnotic’s mix of thriller and sci-fi made the film similar to noughties films like Deja Vu and Paycheck. Whilst the element where there was a secret government agency who were recruiting and experimenting on people with psychic powers made it feel like a Stephen King story.

Rodriguez did get to work with a bigger budget than he usually has with Hypnotic. It was around $65 to $70 million. It had the look of the big budget film and Rodriguez did attempt to bring in some big effect sequences. Yet Rodriguez came from a grindhouse background and he did manage to include some more horrific sequences due to characters having their mind controlled and they were determined to complete whatever task they were given. There was potential for a horror, sci-fi or comic book film.

Rodriguez is a proud Texan and he does like to highlight his home state. Many of his films are filmed and set in the Lone Star State and it was notable that Hypnotic started in Austin and the majority of the film took place in Texas. It was a little refreshing to see Austin get highlighted instead of the usual American cities in pop culture.

Hypnotic’s issues came from its screenplay. Rodriguez and his co-writer Max Borenstein made a film that had constant twists. It got tiring when the film kept revealing more information and trying to one up the previous twist. It was more like M. Night Shayalaman when he was at his worst. It was a film that was filled with holes that made the film ridiculous. There were moments where its own logic was broken like telling the audience there was a character whose mind cannot be controlled but then shows his mind being manipulated and then seeing someone having a different appearance. The film does try to justify its inconsistences, but it came across as an attempt to cover up bad writing. All the twists in Hypnotic ended making the twist Don’t Worry Darling seem plausible in comparison.

Alice Braga had a thankless role as Diana Cruz, a hypnotic who acted as Rourke’s guide to this underground world. Her role was simply to explain things to her new partner, resulting in Braga becoming nothing more than an exposition machine. This served as another example of the film’s poor writing since Braga didn’t have much of a character to work with.

The best performers were Fichtner and Dayo Okeniyi. Fichtner has always been a great performer and in Hypnotic he was playing a devilish character, someone with a cool, calm charisma. It was believable that Dellrayne could get people to do what he wanted. Okeniyi was notable because his character was eccentric. He was a paranoid hacker who lived off the grid and developed some unusual habits like wearing an eyepatch and making his own Mountain Dew. Okeniyi added a bit of humour to a po-faced film.

Robert Rodriguez attempted to make a more serious sci-fi thriller and seemingly wanted to be seen as a more mature filmmaker. Sadly, he lumbered himself with a story full of holes, leading to a film that was more of a Christopher Nolan impersonation.