Hypnotic

Determined to find his missing daughter, Detective Danny Rourke finds himself spiraling down a rabbit hole while investigating a series of reality-bending crimes. Aided by Diana Cruz, a gifted psychic, Rourke simultaneously pursues, and is also pursued by, a lethal specter, the one man he believes holds the key to finding his missing little girl.

Starring Ben Affleck (who was da bomb in Phantoms, yo), Hypnotic has a lot of issues. A lot of issues. Primarily being that it is a cut-rate, convoluted, x-men meets inception with a dash of the matrix, direct-to-TV style straight-up dumb story that requires the characters to constantly explain shit to the audience.

Who is that? Where are they from? Why are they here? What do they want? How do things work? Everything, from the story’s basic concepts to the terms the characters use over and over. Everything. Every single thing. The film doesn’t show us any of this, it just tells us, again and again, in scene after scene that is a variation of something like this:

Character 1 (dumb): “EMP? What’s that?”

Character 2 (a total genius): “Electromagnetic Pulse. Once it goes off, it fries all electronics in the area.”

Character 1 (still dumb): “Oh.”

Over and over and over again, a seemingly endless fount of expository dialogue between the characters as they run from bad guys, or ride in trucks, or sit places, or while they’re just standing around, with the only difference in the conversations being the level of comicbooky techno-power jibber-jabber that it will contain.

And it’s all in service of the eventual big reveal.

Y’see, kids, things may not be as they appear, here in this “reality-bending” action extravaganza… Unless, like me, what you’re seeing here is dull and obvious, and built out of well-worn cliches, then things are exactly as they appear.

My main takeaway here is that Ben Affleck, more than anything, really wants to be a part of some cool mindfuck of a sci-fi movie, almost as much as he wants to be in a cool bad-ass Boston crime drama, but he just doesn’t make good choices.

Also, I didn’t even realize this was a Robert Rodriguez film until just now as I was posting this. God damn, low how the mighty have fallen, right? Remember when he was an absolute indie king? I don’t blame you if you don’t. I was there, and at this point, it’s hard for me to even recall.

Anyway, William Fichtner runs really weird in this film.