Sommerleigh Pollonais, Senior Writer
Plot: A young woman seeking self-improvement enlists the help of a renowned hypnotherapist. But after a handful of intense sessions, she discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.
Kate Siegel (Hush, Midnight Mass, nearly every movie/tv series directed by husband Mike Flanagan) as our lead Jenn is a woman who has had a rough go of it and whose best friend Gina (Lucie Guest) recommends she meets with Dr. Collin Meade (Jason O’Mara), a hypnotherapist who has worked wonders for her. Seeing this is nothing more than a Lifetime movie with a slightly bigger budget, it’s quickly revealed Dr Meade is a sleazy crazy man who uses his abilities to make women do whatever he wants, including kill for him.
I was really hoping there would be more to Hypnotic than the trailer showed but alas, ‘twas not meant to be (sorry, just finished re-reading Macbeth again). So here’s the good news, Kate Siegel is a wonderful actress and somehow manages to make Jenn not only interesting, but sympathetic as well as heroic. Jason O’Mara has always struck me as kinda creepy so he works well here. And Dule Hill (Psych) as Detective Wade manages to wring life out of what could’ve easily been a forgettable role.
The rest is your typical generic revenge thriller that makes no real effort to be imaginative with the exception of its solid conclusion. Because they chose to reveal VERY early the whodunit aspect of the movie we’re left with nothing more than us waiting to see the good guys win the day.
Hypnotic is anything but. Don’t worry though, you won’t need to visit a crazy hypnotherapist to forget you wasted your time watching this; give it a day or two and it’ll be like it never even happened.
Sommer’s Score: 5 out of 10
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Sommerleigh of the House Pollonais. First of Her Name. Sushi Lover, Queen of Horror Movies, Comic Books and Binge Watching Netflix. Mother of two beautiful black cats named Vader and Kylo. I think eating Popcorn at the movies should be mandatory, PS4 makes the best games ever, and I’ll be talking about movies until the zombie apocalypse comes.
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