Hypnotic (2023)

"Preposterous tosh from start to finish" was Mark Kermode's take. He's not wrong, though we did kind of enjoy it.

 

I was thinking about the recent unfortunate cancellation of 1899, supposedly because a statistically-significant portion of the audience somehow lost the will to continue after an episode or two. 

Right now we are watching Apple's Silo and the phrase Dark for dummies springs to mind. 

And so perhaps we might describe Hypnotic as Inception-lite. 

Perhaps ironically when I watch a Christopher Nolan movie or a Baran bo Odar series, my inner mental state could well be represented thus...

 

 

 

With Hypnotic the only real swirling confusion surrounded the lackadaisical nature of the underlying ground rules and crucially, I never felt the urge to reach for my notebook because an interesting thought had been prompted to pop up inside my head. 

 

But maybe there really is a market for middlebrow mindbenders, and Netflix, having been burned by 1899, might be best placed to find it.

Minor spoiler alert: I did enjoy the way Robert Rodriguez taunted viewers for much of the movie with the sheer corny fakeness of everything (Mexico in particular, which should have hoisted a few fed flags), only to have an answer ready as the third act kicked off...though this was a new form of silliness.