MOVIE REVIEW: “Hypnotic” is weak beer

We all love a good thriller, the suspenseful buildup upticks the adrenaline into a Nike logo to leave us game for more.

For instance, thirty minutes into the horror film Get Out, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend’s mother, Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener), have a sit down.

No, they didn’t do so to resolve their black and white dichotomy.

Rather, Missy invites Chris to join her so she can hypnotize him.

When she achieves this goal, she commands him to “Sink.”

Then Chris sinks through the chair he’s seated on, into a dark void.

“Now you’re in the Sunken Place.” Missy says.

“Hypnotic” is a thriller which obligingly builds on this scene, but lurches in the Sunken Place of its own poor quality a little too long.

It stars Kate Siegel as Jenn, a lady who looks so much like a low budget Angelina Jolie; I almost looked for Brad Pitt’s number to let him to know that he could have his cake and eat it too.

You know, by having a Jenn (Aniston) and a Jolie lookalike, too.

Stale joke aside, Jenn is an unemployed software engineer who recently broke up with her long-term boyfriend Brian (Jaime M. Callica).

No, he doesn’t look anything like Brad.

Instead, he looks like Kid Cudi and maybe that’s why Jenn is a little confused. And depressed, her energy could empty any space of its positivity.

So maybe she’s the Room Raider…okay, no more Jolie references.

At a housewarming party for her best friend, Gina (Lucie Guest), Jenn meets Gina’s hypnotherapist.

His name is Dr. Collin Meade (Jason O’Mara).

Dr. Meade then invites her for a session on his couch and she agrees, but soon finds herself hypnotized.

She doesn’t sink into the couch like Chris in “Get Out”, even though she finds herself in her very own Sunken Place.

But she’s not alone, Dr. Meade is right there with her as he develops a suffocating obsession with her.

The man is everywhere she turns, stalking her every move. While bringing along with him a number of crimes whose smoking guns pollute the nostrils of detective Wade Rollins (Dule Hill) with the scents of murders most foul.

Still, Dr. Meade’s attraction to Jenn is not that fatal.

To be sure, if she was Michael Douglas and he was Glenn Close, the only thing that would’ve died would be the time you killed watching this schlock.

The dialogue appears to have featured the cat which died in “Fatal Attraction” since something seems to have caught the tongues of all the characters in this movie.

Whatever they say only reaches the heights of stilted conversation.

There is simply nothing compelling about this ill-formed cast, which seemed more interested in setting the stage for a scene instead of stealing it.

Dr. Meade’s backstory should’ve given him depth; instead it will earn him viewer eye rolls.

Several times, I wondered if they should’ve invited Chris from “Get Out”, just to provide us with a familiar face to go with the sinking feeling you’ll get when you watch this titanic dud.

Sure, the cinematography is decent.

Although that only serves an illusory appeal in the same way cosmetic surgery makes Bad Black look less like a kerb crawler but more like an Escort Lady.

Netflix has surely stretched is legs in every movie genre to make us wonder whether its budget will survive such flops, especially if they keep coming out with such hypnotic regularity.