Review: Hypnotic

Director: Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote

Screenplay: Richard D'Ovidio

Year: 2021

The mind is a powerful and severely underrated tool. By having access to your mind, another person can take control of your actions and even your life, a scenario popularized by "Get Out". Whether or not this is possible is the subject of another conversation, but it does serve as an interesting premise for a horror movie. 

Jenn's life is not at its best and a friend advises her to visit her therapist, who works wonders with his hypnosis treatment. Reluctantly Jenn agrees, and after the first session, she begins to notice positive changes in her life. However, after several sessions with the therapist, Jenn begins to do things that she does not remember and suspects that her therapist may be influencing her subconscious actions. 

If so far the premise of this movie has not hooked you, you are one of the lucky ones who will avoid disappointment. Not necessarily because "Hypnotic" is a bad movie, but because it doesn't live up to its potential. 

One of the elements that “Hypnotic” could have used best in its favor is suspense, but it fails to achieve it. Screenwriter Richard D'Ovidio ("Thir13en Ghosts") intelligently makes the protagonist quickly figure out that her therapist is manipulating her, something that is extremely obvious from the beginning, and that as an audience we appreciate that it doesn’t drag on too long. However, this early discovery also wipes out any suspense it may have generated and becomes too predictable. 

Actions such as the aesthetic factor remain in line with what is correct, which is a benefit and a problem at the same time. The fact that nothing is abysmally bad keeps us waiting for something to improve, an unexpected turn, or something that takes it out of its monotonous predictability, but everything remains in line as if they were good children. No one in his cast or staff takes on the role of that problem child who makes any situation spicy, and so we get to the end, where each scene can be predicted from the previous one.

"Hypnotic" has an extremely interesting but horribly used premise. At no point does it feel like anyone was trying to offer more than just a mediocre movie and that's what we get in the final product. Its predictability and temperance will condemn it to the alley of oblivion sooner rather than later.