Hypnotic movie review & film summary (2021)

At a housewarming party for her best friend, Gina (Lucie Guest), Jenn meets Gina’s therapist, Dr. Collin Meade (O’Mara). Our first red flag about him should be the fact that he’s socializing so freely with his patients (our second being his propensity for pairing turtlenecks with blazers). But he’s quietly intriguing with his steely, blue eyes and rich, resonant voice—O’Mara has played Batman in several animated DC Comics movies—so Jenn decides to visit him for a session and work through her issues. The lurid, black-and-silver office décor and a split diopter shot are early indicators that Dr. Meade’s intentions might not be entirely honorable. (They’re also indicators that directors Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote have seen a lot of Brian De Palma movies).

Still, an hour under hypnosis flies by as if it were just a few minutes, and when Jenn awakens, she instantly feels unstuck. “I think you might be more open to suggestibility than you imagined,” Dr. Meade purrs with a gleam in his eye. But when she suddenly can’t account for giant chunks of time and bad things happen to the people around her, she starts asking questions. In playing amateur detective, she laughably Googles the phrase “hypnosis crimes” and then prints out the actual results to make her argument to the skeptical Gina.

Meanwhile, Dr. Meade has a knack for ubiquity, showing up wherever Jenn goes, gaslighting her with smooth responses to her every concern, messing with her mind even further. A low-key Dule Hill doesn’t get much of a character to play as the Portland police detective who’s been investigating Meade’s patients—and the untimely demise so many of them seem to suffer—for years. It’s also convenient (and unlikely) that he doesn’t have a cell phone charger in his car, rendering him unreachable at a key moment.

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