# Hypnotic (2023) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [May 31, 2023, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808 "2023-05-31T06:29:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2023, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/1 "2023-05-31T06:29:50Z")
Anyone else see this piece of dung? Back story: My friend needs to take his dad to dialysis. I went along as he needs help getting him out of the car. After dad is all set up we realize we have over 3 hours to burn. At first we were going to go to lunch but then decided to catch a movie as the theater was less than half a mile away on the same street. The only movie that was going to be showing starting within the hour was Hypnotic. \*Neither of us had ever heard of this flick \*Neither of us had ever seen a poster or trailer for this movie. \*We had absolutely no clue who was in it or what it was about. We didn’t even look at the poster as we walked in. For all we knew the Muppets could have been in it. So we thought it was kind of an adventure sitting down to a movie that we knew absolutely nothing about. We had no expectations or pre-conceived biases. Man does it suck. The plot is like listening to a little kid tell a story and just making up horseshit as they go along. I wish the Muppets had been in it! > **[Hypnotic (2023) - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8080204/)** > > Hypnotic: Directed by Robert Rodriguez. With Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, JD Pardo, Dayo Okeniyi. A detective investigates a mystery involving his missing daughter and a secret government program. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/2 "2023-06-01T03:47:29Z")
Damn. I’d been planning to check this out, as it seems like one of Affleck’s smaller films, which I tend to like (Paycheck, The Accountant, The Town). Hate to hear this one’s a dud. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/3 "2023-06-01T05:59:18Z")
I’ve recently come to the reluctant conclusion that Robert Rodriguez is not a very talented filmmaker. He may be audacious and imaginative and willing to take risks, but he’s simply not that technically competent. ---
**Author:** ![Mike\_Mabes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mike_mabes/32/1782_2.png) [@Mike\_Mabes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mike_Mabes)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/4 "2023-06-01T07:39:24Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > \*Neither of us had ever heard of this flick > \*Neither of us had ever seen a poster or trailer for this movie. > \*We had absolutely no clue who was in it or what it was about. We didn’t even look at the poster as we walked in. years ago on his podcast that is basically what Adam Corolla said about Reservoir Dogs, except I think they saw the poster on the way in. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2023, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/5 "2023-06-01T17:09:42Z")
I don’t know anything about Hypnotic, but a few years ago my wife and I were vacationing in western Mass and wandered into a theater to catch a random movie, and the guy said there was an unlisted movie sneak previewing…so we went into a theater that had us and maybe twenty teenaged girls, and we watched Divergent. I guess based on the OP that could’ve gone worse, but it was still pretty bad. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/6 "2023-09-11T14:41:45Z")
Ugh. I just noticed this on Netflix, and from the preview it looked like an intriguing thriller with sci-fi elements. Ben Affleck is hit-or-miss in stuff, and the female lead is Alice Braga, who I was vaguely aware had been in some good stuff in the past. So Mrs. solost and I watched it Saturday night. Wow, was it bad. I was going to start a public service thread with the title “Save yourself an hour and a half of your life and don’t watch Hypnotic” if a thread had not already been started. Here’s a capsule plot review so you can get an idea how bad the movie is without wasting ~90 minutes of your life: Affleck is a detective who had his daughter kidnapped under his nose in a park years ago. Jeez, great detective, right? In his continuing search for what happened to her, he encounters a guy who has these super-hypnotic powers that allow him to make other people do all kinds of bad stuff, which he frequently does, like rob banks and then kill themselves. He comes across a clue- a polaroid pic of his daughter with a name written on it that he assumes is the name of super-hypno dude (Lev something). Then he meets a psychic (Braga) who explains that some people, like ‘Lev’, are ‘hypnotics’ who can do that mind control voodoo. But that was all a fake-out! It turns out that Affleck and Braga were both hypnotics, married to each other, and were members of a super-secret agency called The Institute, where everybody wears red blazers, as if they were all RE/Max realtors. They had a daughter, who The Agency wanted to take away from them and train her so they could take over the world or something, because she was the most super-duper hypnotic of all. So Affleck hid her and wiped his memory clean so he couldn’t reveal her location. The agency, with Braga’s help (traitor!) hypnotized him into thinking he’s a detective whose daughter was kidnapped so he would reveal her hiding place. So all the hypnotized bank-robbing & murdering in Act I never actually happened. But-- double fake-out!! The ‘Lev Something’ name on the polaroid was actually an anagram for the name of the street where Affleck hid his daughter. Affleck has set up a trap in which the entire Institute shows up, guns a-blazin’, to get the daughter, who had been cared for by Jeff Fahey and some woman, though how Affleck knew and trusted them enough to hide and care for the daughter for 4 years without The Institute also knowing them, was not really made clear. Or maybe I was past caring at that point. Affleck hypno-ed The Institute into thinking they were about to get the daughter back, when _PSYCH_, _ **they** _ were all in a hypno-illusion! The Institute all gets killed off by Fahey and company. Then-- triple fake-out!!! It turns out that Braga had been in on it _the whole time_- she had Affleck came up with the idea of hiding the daughter together, then they wiped both their minds and she went back to being a loyal Institute drone so she could be an “inside person”. Don’t get me wrong- I like a good plot twist as much as the next guy, and I’m fine with sci-fi or supernatural stuff as long as the internal rules of the fictional universe make sense. But this was so nonsensical it was ridiculous. It was as if an 8 year old watched “Memento” and wrote a bad rip-off of it. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/7 "2023-09-11T19:08:53Z")
That sounds fucking awful. Thank you for your service. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/8 "2023-09-11T19:27:35Z")
On the plus side, it looks like _Gigli_ finally caught a break. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2023, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypnotic-2023/984808/9 "2023-09-12T04:40:06Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Wow, was it bad. Told ya so! 🤪