10 Recent Movie Twists That Fell Totally Flat

Hypnotic revolves around Detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck), who is haunted by the disappearance of his seven-year-old daughter three years earlier, and follows an increasingly peculiar mystery which may unveil the truth of her whereabouts.

But the third act reveals that Rourke has actually been under a state of hypnosis for most of the movie.

Basically, Rourke isn't a detective, but had his and wife's memories wiped in order to protect their daughter - a powerful psychic who a government organisation, the Division, wishes to use as a weapon.

The events of the film have been a hypnotic construction created by the Division in an attempt to make him remember where he stashed his daughter before having his memory wiped.

It's an intriguing idea, if certainly highly derivative of Inception, Memento, Shutter Island, and countless other mind-bending thrillers, but beyond that, it totally falls apart on the execution front.

As the twist unfurls, we're shown the reality of the hypnotic exercise, where Rourke thought he was driving around in a car earlier in the film but was actually being driven around the Division facility in - wait for it - a golf cart.

It's absolutely impossible to take seriously, which wouldn't be a problem if the film at least had some awareness of its own absurdity. But alas, it clearly thinks it's a genuinely cerebral piece of work, which only makes it that much funnier.