I was very intrigued by the plot of this movie, although the idea of people with the ability to hypnotise others with just their words isn’t a truly original one.
The movie definitely had Inception vibes to it. I found the overarching storyline to be really good, but I did feel that Ben Affleck’s acting was kind of wooden. That did make a lot of sense with what was revealed later on, but I spent a lot of the movie confused about why a good actor was suddenly not as good.
There was an awful lot that was going on in this movie, even though things seemed fairly straightforward at first. I mentioned above that this movie had a feel very similar to Inception. There’s even one scene where the whole world seems to turn upside down, although it seems to indicate that Danny’s perception of reality was changed, rather than reality itself.
I did find Diana’s explanation of how someone acting under hypnosis to be really interesting. She comments that those who use hypnosis make their victims see whatever reality will make them act in the way the person hypnotising them wants them to…and that seems to hold true throughout the whole movie, even when everything changes so drastically.
The movie was mainly focused on Danny and the journey he was taking throughout. The secondary characters weren’t really developed in the same way, especially because there was a real sense of not knowing what, or even who, was truly real and what existed only in Danny’s head.
The strongest relationship in the movie, apart from the one between Danny and Diana, was the one between Danny and his partner, Nicks. I would have liked some more background and detail about Nicks. Even with what was revealed later on, I felt there was more of a relationship between Danny and Nicks and it would have been good to see more of an exploration…especially because so many of the secondary characters just weren’t developed enough to care about.
All in all, this movie was one that I really liked watching. It wasn’t what I was expecting when I first stepped into the cinema and when the movie originally started, but I don’t think that was necessarily a bad thing. There were some clever moments of foreshadowing in this movie and a couple of things happened that I didn’t expect. Yes, there were some things that could have been done better…but on the whole, the movie was a really intriguing watch. It held my attention throughout and I’d be interested in watching a sequel to this movie, perhaps one where the wider world is explored.
Ink of Blood 