Director: Robert Rodriguez
A police detective's search for his missing daughter pulls him into a web of mind manipulation and buried government secrets in Robert Rodriguez's 2023 thriller Hypnotic, led by Ben Affleck.
What is Hypnotic about?
Danny Rourke, a Texas detective still unraveling after his daughter's disappearance, catches a bank robbery case that doesn't add up — witnesses describe events that contradict the security footage entirely. A stranger seems able to bend other people's perception at will, and Rourke chases the man across Austin trying to understand how. The pursuit drags him into a shadowy program built around psychic influence, forcing him to question what actually happened on the day his daughter vanished. Detective work turns into a fight to separate real memory from manufactured memory. Alice Braga plays a fellow investigator pulled into the same chase, while William Fichtner appears as a figure whose calm exterior hides the film's central threat.
Cast & crew
Ben Affleck anchors the film as Rourke, playing the character's grief with more restraint than the genre usually allows. Alice Braga and William Fichtner round out a cast that also includes J. D. Pardo, Jeff Fahey, Dayo Okeniyi, Jackie Earle Haley, and Kelly Frye, each dropped into a plot built on shifting identity and unreliable perception.
Context & significance
Hypnotic marks a return to the twisty, reality-bending thrillers that first set Robert Rodriguez apart from straight action filmmaking, produced on a leaner scale than his studio work. The screenplay, co-written by Rodriguez, leans on practical misdirection and sharp editing rather than heavy visual effects to sell its central conceit. It reached UK and US theaters in 2023 as counter-programming to that summer's bigger releases, aimed at audiences who like a crime plot that keeps rewriting its own rules.
Where & how to watch
Hypnotic streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, and this page — synopsis, cast details, and the FAQs below — is free to read without an account. Watching the film itself only requires a free K-Time login, and the interface is built around a Farsi-first experience for Persian-speaking viewers.