The Great Hypnotist

Leste Chen’s The Great Hypnotist just may be the Chinese equivalent to a mix between Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. Like Shutter Island, The Great Hypnotist has a shocking twist and like The Sixth Sense, a main character claims to see “dead people”. The human mind is an interesting subject and the creation of a psychological, mysterious thriller demands lots of planning to make it successful. The Great Hypnotist is brilliant in how it is shot, how it is told, and how it surprised me.

Xu Ruining (Xu Zheng) is a hypnotherapist who had many successes with his patients. His former professor refers Ren Xiaoyan (Karen Mok) to him because she believes that Ruining has the expertise and is the best fit to help Xiaoyan. 

Xiaoyan is unlike any of Ruining’s past patients. She claims to see dead people and asks not “how she is seeing them”, but “why she is seeing them”. Ruining immediately doubts this statement to be true and attempts to uncover her puzzling past, which she keeps closing off and vague. 

As he conducts hypnotherapy, strange mishaps happen. His methods are backfiring and instead of  only Xiaoyan experiencing psychological treatment, he is also dealing with his own psychological problems. 

When pieces of Xiaoyan’s past is revealed, Ruining is persistently doubtful. He does not see a match or logical explanation to some of what he believes to be true and what Xiaoyan tells him. Xiaoyan describes how she relocated to Northern China when she was young and during that month of March, there were petals of a certain red flower that blew in the wind. Ruining finds the flaw in that anecdote because he identifies the flower and finds out that they do not grow in that area nor at that time of year.

With a constant battle of knowing what is true or false, Ruining eventually believes Xiaoyan when she discloses a personal memory of Ruining’s. After the plot twist of Ruining being the intended patient and Xiaoyan the psychiatrist, Chen executes the explanation thoroughly and descriptively.

The Great Hypnotist’s acting was solid from all the cast members. The emotion Zheng expressed when he is facing the guilt of his past showed his acting skills. We see that Zheng feels intense guilt for the death of his love and his friend. 

Mok’s undercover role as a ghost-seeing patient and as a psychiatrist were both equally well played. She did a great job as a patient with a traumatizing past and conveniently transitioned to an understanding psychiatrist. 

The scene that is part of Xiaoyan’s past, when she is surrounded by petals of a red flower blowing in the wind gave that particular scene a dreamy, mesmerizing atmosphere. The scene where Ruining starts to experience Xiaoyan’s treatment, it is in a dark bathroom with overflowing water from the sink because Ruining’s traumatic event involved water. Scenes like these enhanced the artistic value and emotional intensity of the film.

As stated before, a mysterious thriller like this requires a load of pre-planning. All the complex details that were included in the first portion of the film had a purpose. They were all a part of the final breakdown.

When Xiaoyan first arrives to receive treatment, she looks at the clock and says it is too slow. She proceeds to change the time to look as if she is correcting the clock; but in reality, she altered the time by a few hours. Ruining’s assistant also had a role and as she was giving him his usual coffee. She poured some medicine to make him drowsy. The confusion of time and the lack of focus made Ruining disoriented and not in his sharpest state of mind, which enabled Xiaoyan to easily influence and conduct wake hypnosis. Wake hypnosis is the method in which she has expertise in, whereas hypnotherapy is the method in which Ruining has expertise in.   

Like any other mystery, a problem or question is raised and the solution and explanation unravels afterwards. The Great Hypnotist was very detailed, but its complexity did not hinder with the quality of the film. It made the film what it is: clever, mind-boggling, and captivating.

When watching this film, I suggest that viewers give full attention to all minor details to receive the full effect the film has to offer. One blank gaze or divided attention can cause confusion in understanding.

The Great Hypnotist is a thriller that makes viewers feel like they are also the patient. Leste Chen inarguably inserted the “great” in this film.

___________________________________________________________

CREDITS

Writer: Ren Peng

Director: Leste Chen

Producers: Tina Shi and James Li

Main Cast: Xu Zheng, Karen Mok, Lv Zhong, David Wang

Running Time: 100 minutes