Regression

We all know that that there is no supernatural but at the same time some atavistic aspect of our psyche makes us prone to a myriad of irrational beliefs.  Supernatural thrillers play on that susceptibility with the most sophisticated of them such as The Sixth Sense and The Awakening and indeed Amenábar’s own The Others achieving an intellectually-satisfying reconciliation of the two perspectives. Although Regression co-opts devices from the supernatural genre – gloomy interiors, doors creaking in the night, upturned crucifixes and so on – it is actually a crime thriller with supernatural embellishments.  It is, in other words a bit of a mash-up and more to the point, not a particularly satisfying one.

The main problem is that Amenábar over-plays his hand from the get-go with opening titles telling us about the film being based on a real nationwide scare in the 1980s concerning the existence of Satanic cults and a hooded figure (David Dencik) pulling up in torrential rain outside a Minnesota police station where in a barely lit office Detective Bruce Kenner (Ethan Hawke) questions him about allegations by his 17 year old daughter, Angela (Emma Watson), that he sexually abused her. We then cut to Angela’s cat-filled home where her suspiciously crone-like grandmother appears to be hiding something and most fatally Amenábar, who wrote the script, plants a suggestion that Kenner’s sidekick is involved in a cover-up before, conveniently, a psychologist “Professor” Dr. Kenneth Raines (David Thewlis) turns up and starts introducing Kenner to the wonders of regression therapy.

All this happens in the first 15 minutes of the film and for the next hour and a half the film routinely does exactly what you think it is going to do which is reveal the baseless nature of the local and nationwide fear.  Of course, there’s nothing supernatural about sex abuse so debunking what was already evident is no great feat but then as a thriller about organized sex abuse Regression doesn't exactly get the pulse racing either.  Spotlight, in which the words "real events" actually meant something, was far more effective in this regard.

Ethan Hawke, coming across like a kind of younger, slimmer Nick Nolte, is effective as the humourlessly dogged, gravelly-voiced detective, but both Emma Watson, who still can’t shake off her Harry Potter legacy, and the ubiquitous David Thewlis should have turned this one down.  Still, how were they to know?  Amenábar has had up to this point a C.V. to die for.  On the basis of Regression it will be in intensive care for a while.

Available from: Village Roadshow

 

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