A sci-fi thriller that spent decades in development and years on the shelf just to flop finally proves its worth on streaming

Any project that spends years – if not decades – in development hell is going to be viewed with at least some degree of skepticism, and while sci-fi thrillers tend to take their sweet time in crawling from page to screen, Robert Rodriguez’s long-gestating Hypnotic turned out to be much more Gemini Man than Blade Runner 2049.

The multi-talented filmmaker wrote the first draft of the script way back in 2002, and had held onto it ever since as one of his favorite creations. Hypnotic finally gained real traction 16 years later when it was given a green light, with shooting spanning two months before eventually wrapping in November of 2021.

However, it vanished from the face of the planet soon after that, and found itself stuck in purgatory until March of this year, when it was revealed out of nowhere following a surprise screening at South by Southwest that it was coming to theaters on May 12. With a high concept and a talented cast led by Ben Affleck, was it worth it in the end?

Based on the fact Hypnotic holds a measly 36 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and earned less than $6 million at the global box office on a budget reported to be as high as $65 million, “no” might be an understatement. The Christopher Nolan comparisons were harsh if not unfounded, while there’s an air of over-familiarity to many better movies that it just can’t shake.

Hypnotic is already available on VOD, where it’s finally started to justify its existence on some level by emerging as one of the Top 10 most-watched titles among iTunes customers in the United States, per FlixPatrol. It’s not much, but even a small victory is still a victory.