This cheap, deeply silly, film about an evil hypnotherapist relies on too many smart people acting stupidly
n Netflix’s shoddy movie-of-the-week thriller Hypnotic, hypnosis is used as a tool of terror, making people either do horrible things or believe that horrible things are being done to them. For someone under the spell, an hour can feel like a minute, an enviable experience for anyone actually watching Hypnotic, an unrewarding slog being fished out of the garbage for Halloween no tricks or treats, just tripe.
It’s the kind of half-assed slop that has sadly come to dominate much of the streamer’s original film content, slapdash TV movies made on the cheap and trucked out in mass for an audience who have now come to expect and accept such subterranean quality as the norm. A low budget does not, of course, have to mean low effort but it’s hard to see where any of the energy is here, making it impossible to muster up any as one watches – a film about being put to sleep that sends us there too.
It stars Kate Siegel – something of an in-house Netflix player having starred in her husband Mike Flanagan’s ‘Haunting of’ anthology shows as well as Gerald’s Game and Hush which she co-wrote – as Jenn, a thirtysomething woman struggling to get her shit together. At her best friend’s house party, while trying to dodge her ex-boyfriend, she meets dashing hypnotherapist Dr Meade (Jason O’Mara), who offers a way through her inertia. Jenn is reluctant at first but relents and agrees to go under. She awakes refreshed but a chain of events soon makes her realise that Dr Meade’s intentions might not be as noble as she thought.