HYPNOTIC (2021)

Studio:     Netflix
Director:    Suzanne Coote, Matt Angel
Writer:     Richard D’Ovidio
Producer:  Michael J. Luisi
Stars:     Kate Siegel, Jason O’Mara, Lucie Guest, Jaime M. Callica, Tanja Dixon-Warren, Luc Roderique, Dule Hill

Review Score:

---

Summary:

A troubled woman suspects her hypnotherapist may have manipulated her subconscious mind for nefarious purposes.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Andrea Bowen, who suffers from claustrophobia, calls Detective Wade Rollins, who is managing her ongoing case, with a frantic concern that her hypnotherapist, Dr. Collin Meade, is still stalking her. While in an elevator shortly afterward, Andrea accepts a cellphone call from an unknown number. Meade tells Andrea, “this is how the world ends,” which triggers Andrea into believing the elevator walls are closing in on her. Andrea dies of a heart attack.

Jenn Tompson attends a housewarming party hosted by her friend Gina Kelman and Gina’s husband Scott. Jenn is distressed to discover her ex-fiancé Brian Rawley is also at the party. Gina introduces Jenn to Dr. Meade and recommends that she seek therapy from him to help recover from Brian and get her life in order. Jenn and Meade make a connection during the party.

In her first session with Dr. Meade, Jenn reveals that her engagement to Brian became troubled due to a miscarriage. Meade mentions he had a mentor named Dr. Xavier Sullivan and later reveals he also had a dead wife named Amy. Jenn continues seeing Meade for several months, although she remembers nothing from her time spent under hypnosis.

To heal from their broken relationship, Meade suggests that Jenn invite Brian to her place for dinner, which she does. While grocery shopping for the dinner, Jenn receives a phone call that causes her to black out. When she recovers, Jenn finds herself at the dinner table while Brian lies dying in her bathroom from an allergic reaction. Brian is rushed to the hospital to begin a lengthy recovery.

Several days later, Jenn puts together clues that reveal Meade triggered a subconscious suggestion that compelled her to poison Brian with sesame oil. Through online research, Jenn also finds out about the criminal complaint Andrea Bowen filed against Meade prior to her death.

After convincing Gina that Meade might be manipulating and murdering patients, Jenn takes her suspicions to the detective who was handling Andrea’s case. Wade corroborates those suspicions by showing the two women surveillance footage of Andrea having her hallucination in the elevator. Gina worries because she too recently underwent hypnosis with Meade.

Jenn returns to Meade to secretly record a hypnosis session. Afterward however, Jenn’s recording only reveals that Meade knew she was attempting to incriminate him in Andrea Bowen’s death.

Jenn calls Gina with an urgent warning that Meade found out they were on to him. Driving a car with her husband Scott as a passenger, Gina ignores Jenn’s warning to take another call. Over the phone, Meade triggers Gina’s arachnophobia. Gina hallucinates a tarantula in her lap. Gina crashes the car, killing herself and her husband.

Wade confronts Meade with files linking additional deaths to female patients who share similar physical characteristics. While in the doctor’s office, Wade secretly pockets a spoon that Meade touched. Wade vaguely threatens Meade before leaving.

Meade shows up at Jenn’s apartment. Meade uses a verbal command to briefly freeze Jenn and takes that moment to taunt her.

Meade hypnotizes a patient named Tabby into attacking Wade in his home. By defending himself against Tabby’s unexpected assault, Wade ends up in the hospital with severe injuries.

On Wade’s recommendation due to her work with Portland PD, Jenn visits Dr. Stella Graham to find out what Meade planted in her head. Dr. Graham discovers Meade planted a failsafe that makes his subconscious triggers too powerful to eliminate. However, Graham uses hypnosis to plant a counter-trigger in Jenn’s mind.

Despite undergoing convulsions during her session with Dr. Graham, Jenn remembers the address from a building she briefly saw while hypnotized. Jenn traces the address to Dr. Xavier Sullivan, whom Meade previously identified as his mentor, and also discovers Sullivan was involved in the MKULTRA mind control experiments.

Jenn calls Wade to tell him she is going to see Dr. Sullivan. Wade realizes Jenn is in danger when fingerprints from the spoon he previously stole reveal Meade is actually Sullivan’s son Julian. Despite the pain, Wade forces himself out of his hospital bed to go after Jenn.

Meade captures Jenn after she shows up at his house. Jenn discovers Meade was planting memories in her mind to reshape Jenn as Meade’s dead wife Amy, which Meade had also been trying to do with previous patients.

Following a misguided raid on Meade’s office, Wade arrives at Meade’s house. Wade and Meade fight. While resisting Meade’s “sleep” command, Jenn aims a gun toward the two men and fires.

Jenn seemingly recovers in Wade’s arms. However, the vision turns out to be another subconscious suggestion from Meade. Jenn breaks out of her trance when Meade calls her “my love,” which triggers Dr. Graham’s countermeasure. Freed from Meade’s influence, Jenn recovers a gun from Wade’s ankle holster and kills Meade. Despite having been shot by Jenn, Wade and Jenn both go on to recover one month later.

---

Review:

“Star Wars” fandom used to be a nostalgia nerd’s paradise for bonding over beloved films, action figures, and collectable Burger King glasses. Now that oasis has been overrun by an overzealous lynch mob who can’t stop complaining about “Kathleen Kennedy this” and “Kelly Marie Tran that.” It’s embarrassing to even identify yourself as a fan of the franchise nowadays, because you’re immediately associated with misogyny, racism, and infantile pouting about supposedly ruined childhoods. Keep in mind, all of this is over a fictional sci-fi soap opera originally created to entertain eight-year-olds.

It’s sad to say, but fright film fandom has been skewing toward toxicity too. In the horror community, Rob Zombie occupies Rian Johnson’s unenviable position as the prime Public Enemy who immediately draws ire at the mere mention of his name. Zombie cannot post a simple teaser photo on Instagram without igniting a predictable bombardment of nepotism accusations, chiefly focused on consistently casting his wife Sheri Moon Zombie in every one of his films.

What’s hilariously hypocritical about this is you never hear those loudmouths leveling the same charges against Mike Flanagan, who also casts his wife Kate Siegel in pretty much everything he does. To be abundantly clear, I’m not advocating that Zombie and Flanagan should be decried equally for stacking their casts with friends and family. I’m pointing out how absurd it is to contend that a filmmaker should commit years of his/her/their life to a project, and then insist that he/she/they shouldn’t be surrounded by familiar faces who are capable, comfortable, and proven fun to work with. “Sorry, I know we’ve been creatively collaborating for years now, but I’m gonna have to leave you off my next movie. Don’t want the ‘Mad Online’ contingent to accuse me of playing favorites again.”

Haters try to justify their lazy animosity toward Sheri by dismissively claiming, “She can’t act,” but that simply isn’t true. I challenge anyone who says that to cite a single time she was miscast in one of her husband’s films. The reality they’d prefer not to admit is that she’s been the best choice for every part she’s played, which certainly isn’t a coincidence considering Zombie writes those roles specifically for her.

When it comes to finding roles that fit their regulars, you can’t say the same thing about Mike Flanagan. If you don’t believe me, take another look at Henry Thomas trying to do a Jack Nicholson impression in “Doctor Sleep,” then try arguing that’s not a square peg fighting to slam into a round hole. Oh, and before anyone ignites any torches in my direction for criticizing Flanagan, kindly note that he’s easily in my top ten favorite genre directors of all time, and that list includes Carpenter, Romero, and other icons. “Doctor Sleep” (review here) is still an objective example of forcing a friend into a role that really isn’t right for him.

Part of the reason why there appears to be a double standard for Zombie/Zombie and Flanagan/Siegel may have to do with the fact that we rarely see Sheri in anything that isn’t directed by her husband. Kate Siegel on the other hand, shows up a little more often in non-Flanagan projects such as “Hypnotic,” so viewers might be less likely to so distinctly associate her exclusively with who she happens to be married to.

What does any of this have to do with the movie at hand, you might be wondering? Well, nothing really. It’s just that digressing into any other topic, even an argumentative one that’s only tangentially related, is better than talking about yet another generic ‘Netflix and Chills’ thriller. The editorializing above illustrates just how far a distracted mind will wander while wading through the placid waters of “Hypnotic.”

Kate Siegel plays Jenn, a down-on-her-luck woman whose down-in-the-dumps life could use a redirect. That redirect arrives when Jenn meets Dr. Meade, a hypnotherapist who secretly turns certain female patients into ‘Manchurian Candidates’ by implanting subconscious suggestions during their sessions.

One good thing about this setup, and good things are in short supply with “Hypnotic,” is that Jenn realizes what this doctor is doing before the 30-minute mark, so the plot doesn’t drag out the time taken for her to catch on to what the audience already knows from the get-go. It would be hard for anyone not to figure out Dr. Meade might be up to villainous deeds anyway, what with him wearing a black turtleneck, sipping scotch, and listening to opera music like cultured yet sinister doctors so often do in stereotypical cinema.

But from the telegraphed outcome of a dual location SWAT raid to what is probably the first ever use of ‘Chekhov’s EpiPen’ (How bad was his allergic reaction that he’s still hospitalized in a coma over one month later?), none of “Hypnotic’s” attempts at suspense succeed. Because there’s no deep mystery in play or juicy twist to ratchet up tension, we’re basically left waiting for the movie to inch toward exactly where it tells you it’s going within the first 10 minutes. And that waiting room is boringly built out of sterile rooms and long hallways that aren’t even close to visually engaging despite being lensed by veteran “X-Files” cinematographer John S. Bartley.

What does that give us? One more negligible release-of-the-week that will gradually become buried under more and more by-the-book movies as Netflix continues churning them out. Now do you see why I’d rather talk about anything else, even if that anything else was an analogy that stretched to connect a mediocre Kate Siegel vehicle to the worst fans of “Star Wars?”

Review Score: 50

---