Hypnotic is a Netflix psychological thriller about a woman who takes the help of a hypnotherapist to overcome her grief. Soon she finds that therapy has strange effects on her, and she begins to realize she’s not in control of her mind.
Summary
The film opens with a woman is alone in an office building late at night where she is terrified that a person is stalking her she tries to get in touch with a detective as she is leaving. As she gets into the elevator, she gets a call from an unknown number that tells her that this is how the world ends. Soon, the walls of the small enclosed space she is in begin to close in on her, and she falls down.
Jenn (Kate Siegel) is at her friend Gina’s (Lucie Guest) house warming party where she finds out that Brian (Jamie M Callica), her ex is also there. She is upset and drinks quite a lot. Gina introduced her to Colin Mead (Jason O’Mara) a hypnotherapist who gave her his card. Jenn saves Brian from accidentally eating sesame seeds, to which he is deathly allergic. Jenn and Brian still care for each other, and they end up together after the party.
Gina convinces Jenn to meet the hypnotherapist as he helped her be happy and get over her fears, namely arachnophobia.
Reluctantly Jenn agrees, and in the first appointment, she reveals that Brian is her ex-fiancé, and after a miscarriage, their relationship fell apart. Jenn is also unemployed and deeply unhappy.
Dr. Meade suggests hypnotherapy, Jenn agrees. When she wakes up, an hour has gone, and she remembers nothing but feels better. In a few months and Jenn has a job and is happier, attending sessions with Dr. Meade. Jenn eventually stops seeing Dr.Mead, one day; she runs into him at a mall, and he suggests that they talk over coffee. Jenn is uncomfortable but agrees.
Dr. Meade suggests to Jenn that she invite Brian for dinner to get closure but she’s hesitant then agrees. She’s on her way to the supermarket to get groceries for dinner when her phone rings with an unknown caller ID. She blanks out; when she wakes up, she’s at her table, and she gets up to find Brian on the floor in the bathroom, having been sick and now unconscious. She injects him with anti-allergic and calls the hospital.
The scene shifts to outside the hospital. Brian is inside unconscious, where Gina comforts Jenn, who reveals that she can’t remember anything that happened and wonders if she was somehow responsible for serving Brian sesame, something she knows could kill him. Gina comforts her, insisting that he’ll be fine. Later, when Jenn is tidying up when she finds a receipt for her shop, which proves that, in her blackout, she deliberately bought sesame oil. She also remembers that she had added the oil to the salad, which poisoned Brian.
Jenn looks up Dr. Meade on the internet and finds a pattern of women who have died after being treated by him, including one woman who took out a restraining order against him before dying, seemingly, of a heart attack: Andrea Bowen. She shows the evidence to Gina, and together, they go to Detective Rollins, who reveals that he believes Meade is using hypnotherapy to control and ultimately kill these women but was shut down from investigating Dr. Meade as it would not stand in court.
Jenn gets an emergency session with Dr. Meade and sets her phone to record as he puts her under hypnosis. At the end of the session in the car, she listens back to it, and while she’s under his control, he asks her why she wanted to see him, and eventually teases out of her that she is recording him, that she knows about Andrea, and that Gina knows everything too. He even knows they had been to the police and about Rollins. She realizes that Gina is in danger and tries to warn her, but too late, Gina and her partner die in a car crash due to Hypnotic suggestions by Dr. Mead. Can Jenn escape the evil Dr. Meade’s clutches ?
Hypnotic ending explained in detail:
The mental failsafe
Rollins steals a spoon that may have Meade’s fingerprints. He calls Jenn to tell her that he’s done this and to urge her to be safe, but then he’s attacked by one of Meade’s patients. Wade Rollins is hurt but alive. In the hospital, Rollins and Jenn talk over their options, and she decides to go to another hypnotherapist to try and remember what Meade has said to her in their sessions. However, the new hypnotherapist Dr. Stella Graham (Tanja Dixon-Warren), discovers that Meade has put a failsafe in Jenn’s mind so that if someone goes prodding, they won’t be able to find out anything.
But in a vision, she remembers seeing a house and notes the number and address. Dr. Stella puts in a counter fail-safe in Jenna’s brain. Jenna researches and finds that the house belongs to a man named Xavier Sullivan, who worked on MKUltra (a real-life CIA mind control program from the ’60s). She informs Detective Rollin that she is going there.
Inside the house, she finds a photo of Meade, and he appears behind her, revealing that he is Xavier’s son, and then he puts her to sleep. Meanwhile, Rollins gets a phone call from someone at the lab who says the fingerprints on Meade’s spoon belong to a man named Julian Sullivan. Knowing Jenn was going to the Sullivan home, Rollins leaves the hospital and calls in backup to find her.
Rollins to the Rescue
When Meade instructs Jenn to ‘wake up’ and it is revealed that she’s still in the home and he has effectively turned her into his dead wife ‘Amy,’ it is revealed that Jenn is the closest resemblance whereas the other three previous women were not up to the mark, hence had been eliminated. Mead tuns her into Amy by putting Amy’s memories into her brain and even putting Jenn in her dress and painting her nails red, giving her a bracelet that was his dead wife’s anniversary gift. Rollins figures it out and heads, alone, to the Sullivan home, where he tussles with Meade, who gets the upper hand.
Jenn, who has been Hypno-instructed to remain holding onto the bed frame, manages to break free and finds them in the hallway, Meade about to kill Rollins. Jenn grabs the gun and fires. Jenn wakes up on a sofa in the living room with a Rollins, telling her that everything’s okay and back up is on its way, before consoling her and calling her “my love.” This triggers a memory of her hypnotherapy with Dr. Stella in which she puts in another failsafe, in which if Meade ever refers to her as ‘my love,’ Jenn will disregard every other action he’s ordered her to do and wake up to her true surroundings. This is a measure to protect herself from Meade.
What happens to Brian and Rollins?
As she sits up, she sees Meade, hits him, and runs to find Rollins, who reveals that she shot him instead of Meade. He says ‘ankle,’ and she looks down to see Rollins has another gun; Jenn grabs it and shoots Meade.
Fast forward two months later, Brian is still in a coma. Jenn apologizes to Brian for not allowing him to help her with her grief and minimizing his own. She then says that when he wakes up, she’ll be right there. She visits Rollins, who has been promoted and wishes him well. He gifts her a sleep hypnosis CD, and she says “well played” before walking off.
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