Eagerly anticipating this week ... (6-24)

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (6-24)
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4/23/2023

The Hypnotist/Hypnotisören (2012) - Hallström returns to the fatherland with thriller turkey

 

Uncomfortably staring stars with bluish faces make up this poster for Lasse Hallström's The Hypnotist

A basketball trainer and an entire family have been stabbed to death: Only a big lad survives - but in a coma - and a hypnotist attempts to get answers from him.

 

The Hypnotist is written by Paolo Vacirca (Feed (2022)), with co-writer/director Lasse Hallström (En Kille och en Tjej (1975)) contributing story elements, adapted from Lars Kepler's (Stalker (2014)) same-titled 2009 novel.

Completely incompetent as a thriller, The Hypnotist is an assembly line 'Nordic noir' that also rests on a very dubious story. As seen before the Swedish setting has been robbed of almost all color and humor, and instead Mikael Persbrandt (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)) here walks around and looks like a middle-age crisis-hit man with a bad case of hangover, who hypnotizes people. Lena Olin (Vinyl (2016, TV-series)) plays one of the film's snapping, commanding, sour females.

Violent but unexciting, the film has desperately dull relationship scenes, crisis of confidence scenes, crying children and general discouragement, darkness and ugly settings. Suddenly near the end a more dramatic action suspense is erected out on the ice (literally) but it is hopeless. The Hypnotist is a toothache-reminiscent torment of a film.

 

Related post:
 

Lasse HallströmChocolat (2000) - Delicious pairing in spite of Hallström's ghastly taste

 



Here is a video from a press conference for the film

 

Cost: 61 mil. SEK, approximately 5.91 mil. $

Box office: 7.1 mil. $

= Big flop (returned 1.20 times its cost)

[The Hypnotist was released 28 September (Sweden) and runs 122 minutes. Shooting took place from January - March 2012 in Sweden, including in Stockholm, and in Prague, Czech Republic. The film opened #1 to a 974k $ first weekend in Sweden, where it remained for another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#3), grossing 3.8 mil. $ (53.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Denmark with 916k $ (12.9 %) and Spain with 646k $ (9.1 %). The film was only shown at a couple of film festivals in North America. It was chosen as Sweden's Oscar entry of the year but went without nomination. Hallström returned with Safe Haven (2013). Persbrandt returned in Mig Äger Ingen (2013); Tobias Zilliacus (Beck (2018, TV-series)) in 7 TV and short credits prior to his theatrical return in Onnelin ja Annelin talvi (2015); and Olin in Night Train to Lisbon (2013). 8.4k+ IMDb users have given The Hypnotist a 5.6/10 average rating.]

 

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