Hypnotic

Robert Rodriguez is an immensely gifted cinematographer and has quite a vivid imagination, and both of these great qualities are abundant in Hypnotic. It has a wonderfully clever concept that keeps the film watchable and subversive twists that keep the experience unique.

Sadly, what keeps this movie from being powerful and memorable is it's excessive reliance on exposition. So much of it is necessary to explain the overly complex plot and possibly over half of the dialogue is clumsily-written rapid-fire exposition. It just isn't fun.

And the script keeps us from forming any sort of emotional connection with this story because it's so concerned with explaining WHAT is happening that it forgets to let us in on the intimacies of WHY it's all happening-who these people are, really, and why we should care.

I find this to be a very frustrating film, because it had so much more potential than was tapped into by this extremely rough screenplay.

So about 20 minutes into this movie I thought it was terrible. Affleck's acting is particularly bad, and there's plot holes big enough to drive a bus through, and it just kind of felt like a bad movie that I'd suffer through till the end, but then something happened.... the "reveal" around the hour mark. Suddenly all those plot "holes" weren't actually plot holes, and Affleck's "bad" acting wasn't actually bad at all. That's the point. It's SUPPOSED to watch like a terrible movie because that sets up the reveal. I hate to say it, but that nuance once u know the reveal is kinda brilliant. Affleck in particular is acting badly... ON PURPOSE! And you're supposed to notice those plot holes and be like "Wait, how is that possible?". Those are the clues to the reveal.

So yeah, is it the best movie ever? No. But anyone writing a bad review (in particular criticizing Affleck's acting) just doesn't understand that that was the assignment.

Oh my goodness, how in the world did Ben sign up for this lazy writing? If this is all it takes to write movies these days then anyone can write any crazy unexplainable story and not care of it makes sense or not. Sure it's fiction and we know fiction isn't real but it ought to make some sense, unless it's cartoon.

I am very much disappointed in the whole premise. So many loopholes and when the great reveal happened, it just confused the movie even further. It was like you suddenly were watching a different movie.

The continuity didn't make sense. One minute someone is here, the next minute they aren't the one but someone else. I couldn't make heads or tails of what was happening. The acting was bad and bland.

It could have been so much better. It had the Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange and Professor X vibes but I guess they didn't have the budget to make it that huge.

Had hopes, but this from Ben and the director Rodriguez is pretty bad. To the point of 80's clunkers where cheese was heavily spread throughout many films. As title of review suggests, this seems like a project that Nic Cage missed out on. With Nic amped up to 11, it may have proven to be a fun film. Unfortunately, those involved seemed to be seriously thinking the loose writing, poorly chosen film score and bad acting were what audiences were hoping for. Here's hoping Ben washes the grime off and gets back to delivering some decent entertainment. For now, this film certainly won't be added to my blu-ray collection.

This is a B movie all the way. It has Ben Affleck, but it's still a B movie. The budget was $70M but it's still a B movie. They really tried to create something creative, so I give them credit. That being said, it just didn't work. That's why the studio buried the investment.

Nolan likes to create extremely complex plots, with wild ideas that can alter time, space, perception, reality, memory and in this case the ability to control others thoughts thorough ESP.

It's just way to complex given the cast, locations and the overall premise. It's similar to SCANNERS from 1981. The idea is, but it lacks that 80s vibe, practical special effects and it's just confusing and too short given all there is to unpack. 5.2/10 for the idea and some clever scenes.