Regression (2015)
Directed by Alejandro Amenábar
Minnesota, 1990. Detective Bruce Kenner investigates the case of young Angela, who accuses her father, John Gray, of an unspeakable crime. When John unexpectedly and without recollection admits guilt, renowned psychologist Dr. Raines is brought in to help him relive his memories and what they discover unmasks a horrifying nationwide mystery.
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What critics compared Regression to
Written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar (The Others, The Sea Inside), Regression follows Detective Bruce Kenner (Ethan Hawke) as he investigates sexual abuse allegations made by a 17-year-old girl, Angela (Emma Watson), against her father, John Gray (David Dencik).
The problem is that unlike the filmmaker's more enjoyably enigmatic yet focused thrillers that played with perception — "Open Your Eyes" and "The Others" — he's completely off his game here.
It may return to the theme of raddled reality that bound “Thesis,” “Open Your Eyes” and his modern-classic ghost story “The Others,” but to considerably less stimulating effect: Alert viewers are offered too many clues upfront to be fully taken in by its blurring of conscious and unconscious perspective.
Alejandro Amenábar regresses back to the second-rate horror of his film The Others with Regression, a go-nowhere thriller assembled with dismal carelessness.
Just watching the trailer alone, one immediately gets excited and remembers Amenábar's earlier days when he directed such memorable and game-changing films like “Thesis,” “Open Your Eyes” and especially “The Others” and hopes “Regression” will create the same effect.
Alejandro Amenabar looks to recapture the supernatural chills of his international hit The Others with Regression, a murky detective thriller set during the “satanic panic” that swept the US during the late 1980s.
False memories, bogeymen from popular culture, fiction that feeds itself – these are Regression’s foundations, and in Emma Watson, the vindictive teen who harnesses these satanic forces, in the figurative sense you understand, to punish her provincial and oppressive family, the movie offers a different kind of villain – one that sadly Watson can’t quite invest with the same memorable heft as Edward Norton brought to his rug puller, in the DNA sharing Primal Fear.