It’s a sad day when the co-star of the brilliant and achingly romantic Before Sunset and Sunrise and the marvellous Boyhood, Ethan Hawke appears in the thankless role of Detective Bruce Kenner in a film, rather suggestively, called Regression. But it’s even sadder to report that the film’s Writer/Director is the talented, Academy Award winning (The Sea Inside) Alejandro Amenábar who is arguably, along with Almodóvar, Spain’s greatest living filmmaker. His successful debut feature was the psychological fantasy, Open Your Eyes, followed by the atmospheric, unsettling horror movie, The Others; the lyrical, issue-based biopic, The Sea Inside; and the underrated, but rather wonderful historic film, Agora. Ironically, Amenábar’s ability to master a variety of genres fails him here, where an odd pastiche of trashy exploitation films, slasher/horror movie, psychological thriller, police procedural and drama collide into a dog’s dinner.
A caption tells us that in the 1980s, stories about satanic rituals began spreading in the USA, and that this story is inspired by true events. A creepy father named John Gray (David Dencik) turns himself in to the police after his angelic looking daughter Angela (Emma Watson) accuses him of sexual abuse. Note, the Gray of the sir name is mirrored in the film’s nocturnal atmosphere and the sun never seems to shine. John’s guilty conduct and confession land him in jail, despite the fact he claims to have no recollection of anything of which he is accused.
Detective Bruce Kenner (Hawke) is professional, and open-minded, enough to call in Professor Kenneth Raines (in what must be David Thewlis’s least memorable role), who uses Regression therapy to cut through John’s memory block. Anyone who saw The Confessions of Thomas Quick, about how regression therapy used at Säter’s Psychiatric Clinic in Sweden kept an innocent man in expensive accommodation for years as a serial killer, will appreciate that this method can produce unintended deleterious results.
Amenábar does give us some character development, as Kenner’s impatience with John and determination to protect Angela clouds his judgment and must struggle to regain it. We have seen too many films with detectives who must fight their inner demons to feel much sympathy for Kenner because Amenábar has not built up a case. Hawke is a skilled actor, who can make us laugh or cry on a dime, but When Kenner has nightmares, we cannot share them. Nothing in the film, in fact, is remotely scary. It does not help that many viewers will have figured out the plot twist long before Kenner.
The film’s two Grand Guignol characters, a deranged- looking alcoholic grandmother, Rose (Dale Dickey), who looks surprisingly like Emma Watson despite her awful makeup; and a slimy Reverend Beaumont (Lothaire Bluteau), who shelters Angela at his Joy of Salvation Church, contribute nothing to the story. The ending is the most unsatisfying part of the film as, apart from making himself feel better, Kenner’s breakthrough in the case appears to have no real consequences.
