10 Recent Movies Nobody Saw Coming
3. Hypnotic
Who among us knew that Ben Affleck was collaborating with filmmaker Robert Rodriguez on a new sci-fi action-thriller until about a week before it was released, if that?
From its story through to its aesthetics, the $65 million Hypnotic feels like it tripped and fell directly out of the early 2000s, back when Affleck was regularly producing trashy, high-concept genre films like Paycheck.
It's appropriate, though, given that Rodriguez indeed wrote the first draft of the script back in 2002, and while it was rewritten prior to shooting, there's still something overpoweringly dated about its all-sizzle-no-steak, sub-Inception style and overall execution.
Affleck, hot off so many hits in recent years, seems positively lost in a movie you could easily believe had sat on a studio shelf for three or four years due to the pandemic.
What most people did anticipate from the marketing, however, was indifference from critics and audiences alike, albeit not to the extent that Hypnotic grossed an embarrassing $6.3 million globally - not even 10% of its budget and barely $1 million more than... Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. Yikes.