Film Review: Hypnotic is an old-fashioned paranoid thriller

Ben Affleck as Danny Rourke in Hypnotic. and William Fichtner. Pics: Warners

• Hypnotic
• ★★★☆☆

Hypnotic (15A) opens with Austin police detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) telling a therapist how his young daughter, Minnie (Ionie Olivia Nieves), was abducted before his very eyes.

Called to a bank raid, Danny discovers a polaroid of Minnie in a safe deposit box — a photograph that appears to be the reason for the heist, which is orchestrated by Dellrayne (William Fichtner), a man with a supernatural ability to compel others to do his bidding.

Dellrayne, Danny learns from the fortune teller Diana (Alice Braga), is a hypnotic — capable of altering his victims’ perception of the world — and soon Danny and Diana are running for their lives, desperately trying to find Minnie before Dellrayne can track her down.

William Fichtner in Hypnotic. Pics: Warners

Written by Max Borenstein and Robert Rodriguez, with Rodriguez directing, Hypnotic has the feel of a B-movie adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story, one in which reality itself — or what is offered up as reality at any given time — is not to be trusted.

Just as Danny finds that the world can reconfigure itself at a moment’s notice (the visuals seem to be a nod to Christopher Nolan’s Inception), the unwary viewer quickly realises that the movie can reshape itself — there are realities within realities, all of which are equally authentic.

Despite the sci-fi trappings, this is an old-fashioned paranoid thriller — what can we trust if we cannot trust our own minds? — and square-jawed Ben Affleck is perfectly cast as the baffled detective who is obliged to investigate his own consciousness, with Alice Braga providing dynamic support as Danny’s guide to the weird-‘n’-wonderful world of ‘hypnotic constructs’, and William Fichtner deliciously sinister as the scar-faced villain.

(cinema release)