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Hypnotic
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This is no great shakes as a movie – but it does ring some intriguing variations on the standard hypnosis thriller plot. It makes me want to check out the other films by this directorial duo of Angel & Coote, all in tele-thriller (and especially invasion of-intimacy mode): The Open House (2018) and The Wrath of Becky (2023). First, the hypnosis procedure itself: the sinister Dr Meade (Jason O’Mara) dispenses with old-fashioned watches or metronomes (the latter we see when used by an entirely law-abiding hypnotist). For Meade, nothing less than the entire room pulsating with light will do! This suggests a question (wouldn’t the good Doc himself go under such a powerful sensory barrage?) and a further plot possibility that doesn’t quite reach fruition (when Meade turns the distracting light show on for a snooping cop, Rollins played by Dulé Hill). The story begins not with Meade but Jenn (Kate Siegel, familiar from spouse Mike Flanagan’s works including Hush [2016]). She has a mess of neurotic problems – biting her nails, smoking too much – that leads her to try hypnotherapy, recalling the plight of Daisy Gamble (Barbra Streisand) in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), but with (naturally) some extra trauma added in for this genre: a miscarried child that led to the end of her relationship with Nice Guy Brian (Jaime M. Callica). Just like Daisy, Jenn proves herself extremely susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. And here comes the black hole familiar from many hypnosis thrillers: what happened in that ellipse between falling asleep and waking up? Jenn has, at first, only confused flashes – and it will take her most of the film to reconstitute anything like the entire experience. (An attempt by her to smuggle in a voice-recorder is disastrous.) The plot intrigue of auto-suggestion results not only in abiding mystery but several clever variations in situation. Jenn, it appears, has been so thoroughly programmed that anyone else’s attempt to unlock her via hypnosis will lead only to total seizure. But then there will be a “counter failsafe” lodged within her … In On a Clear Day, Dr Chabot (Yves Montand) can trigger deep sleep in Daisy with a single word. Meade has further refined this art: he can not only knock Jenn out, but also instantly immobilise her (while keeping her conscious), leading to several Flanagan-like scenes of physical terror, endurance and exertion. Jenn keeps having sexy dreams about Meade – a fact about which, curiously, she seems scarcely concerned, not even mentioning it to her best gal pal, Gina (Lucie Guest, herself a prolific telemovie director). The script by Richard D’Ovidio downplays the psychological nuances here (and elsewhere, as when a couple of Jenn’s close friends offhandedly die!) – in order, I assume, to get to another key element in the modern-day hypnosis scenario: implantation of false memories (such a 1990s obsession/phantasm!). But what is it that Jenn is actually remembering? This, I will not spoil. But it does seem to me that Hypnotic tarries with this theme for a hidden reason: to avoid the (strong) hint of sexual abuse during induced unconsciousness – another subject that regularly haunts the hypnosis sub-genre (and also the real-world profession). Final games: hypnotic suggestion here has the ability to make the patient not only see a place that they are not in – thus cuing a bait-and-switch moment of cinema worthy of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – but also to believe that the person they are with is somebody else. Such flair for metamorphosis! For a movie that keeps declaring “you are the ultimate master of your sub/unconscious” (a refrain picked up by the gag coda of a self-hypnosis CD gift), Hypnotic does a quite fine job of convincing us, for 99.9% of its 88-minute running time, that the complete opposite is true! © Adrian Martin 27 December 2023 |
