Saturday, July 7, 2007

Close your Eyes

It was disturbing. It was brilliant.

This is my take on the movie Close Your Eyes (sometimes called Hypnotic). It is an uncomfortable movie that is about a hypnotist (and his problems with being a hypnotist), who inadvertently gets snagged into helping a particular police officer (trying to quit smoking) crack a serial killer case. The case does veer off into the occult. But, there are a lot of really interesting hypnosis references that I feel are beautifully done. The movie shows what goes on in the mind of the hypnosis client. There is particularly nice imagery related to smoking cessation. I cannot say enough about this. Wow. And I admit to trying this sort of imagery out on my clients with interesting results (that would make for another blog entry). There is even a scene in which the hypnotist becomes in tranced by his own induction, though it becomes a nightmare. For any of us who sort of go along with our clients when we hypnotize them, this really hits home.

Anyway, I tend to go into a movie prepared to like it (and I did). Others obviously do not and this seems to be the case. It has gotten a fair amount of panning, though there are some favorable comments. Judge for yourself and feel free to share here (even if you do not like it).

To learn more about the movie, go to http://www.flp.com/films/closeyoureyes/movie/index.html.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, yes. I rented that movie last year sometime and really enjoyed it. Goran Visnjic made a very convincing hypnotist, I thought. I particularly liked the way he eased the little girl into that first induction. Very well done.

Another amusing touch of reality in that movie: by the end, the cop is smoking again. So much for hypnosis as mind control. ;^)

Ellie, do you remember the movie Dead Again? Derek Jacobi plays a hypnotist and has a couple of scenes that are quite impressively realistic. If you haven't seen that one I can recommend it highly.

- Michael Raugh, C.H.

The Transparent Hypnotist said...

I haven't seen that one. I'll put it on the list. Thanks!