Robert Rodriguez’s Hypnotic: A Throwback to Mid-2000s B-Movie Thrillers
Before the summer movie season hits with a barrage of bloated and overextended films, Robert Rodriguez’s Hypnotic offers some fun, unpretentious entertainment. Written in 2002 and filmed as if it was shot soon after, the movie has a curiously dated feel that seems intentionally made to recall a specific moment in cinema history.
Perhaps Rodriguez is tapping into our collective desire to watch mid-budget genre films that look like real movies again, rather than the washed-out content that streaming platforms dump on our smartphones. Though not an event movie in 2023, Hypnotic may have been one back in 2002 with a $70m budget and starring Ben Affleck. Unfortunately, after its original studio Solstice imploded after just one release, the movie was sold on and eventually found a home in the hands of Ketchup Entertainment, a small distributor with no major titles to its name.
The movie certainly has its flaws, including a laughably sub-Inception world-bending imagery and an anonymously by-the-numbers score. Nevertheless, Hypnotic offers a fun and mind-bending sci-fi thriller that plays off the idea of hypnotics, people with the ability to control someone’s idea of reality and reshape it to achieve whatever they want. The plot revolves around the detective Danny Rourke (played by Ben Affleck), who is still searching for his kidnapped daughter. When he meets psychic Diana (Alice Braga), he discovers the hypnotics’ existence and begins a journey of twists and turns to find his daughter.
A Mid-Summer Movie That Feels Refreshing After a Season of Bigger Budgeted Movies
Anyone who grew tired of the self-seriousness of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Inception will find something refreshing in Rodriguez’s humor. Affleck may have a frown, but Rodriguez is directing with a grin, making the movie as silly yet sturdily entertaining as possible.” The hypnosis acts as a fun trick that allows for an escalation of neat mind-fuck reveals, playing with our perception of reality along with the characters. Rodriguez is no Nolan, for better and worse, allowing his lean 93-minute film to glide without pretension yet he also opts for some stylistic choices that feel embarrassingly musty, such as an anonymously by-the-numbers score and some laughably-sub-Inception world-bending imagery. The goofier it all gets, the more one starts to warm to it, leaning further away from its initial A-trappings and nestling into a far more likable B-movie mode.
Although it may struggle to find an audience in theaters, Hypnotic will likely find a place in audiences’ hearts when it hits streaming. A throwback to mid-2000s genre cinema, the movie reminds us of what summer movies looked like twenty years ago. Hypnotic is definitely worth a watch for those seeking a mind-bending thriller with a lighthearted twist.
<< photo by Josh Hild >>
