Regression ** (2015, Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson, David Thewlis) – Movie Review

A father (David Dencik) walks into a police station and confesses to a crime he has no memory of committing – abusing his daughter (Emma Watson).

Writer-director Alejandro Amenábar’s ambitious and unsettling thinking person’s thriller tackles urgent topics but fumbles and eventually drops the ball. It’s all about gossip, suspicion, mass hysteria, witch hunts and trial by public opinion and prejudice, and the idea of psychology as a very variable ‘science’. Everything and everybody can let you down. 

Ethan Hawke plays the dogged cop at the centre of the storm, so determined to get to the truth that he targets one innocent person after another. There’s supposed to be an outbreak of Satanism and mass sexual abuse, and a conspiracy of silence, but what the heck actually happened? The cops call in reluctant psychology Professor Kenneth Raines (David Thewlis) to help in their inquiries. But he only seems to muddy the waters.

This thriller seems loads better after the event when you sit down and mull over all the issues than it is while you watch it. As food for thought and discussion it’s marvellous. It may be disturbing but it just doesn’t grip and compel as it should.

Yet it’s nicely shot in new noir style, you can admire its intelligence and right thinking, and Hawke and Dencik are both very good. The Brits Watson and Thewlis seem a bit out of place and ill at ease. But Aaron Ashmore as the possibly dodgy cop, Lothaire Bluteau as the priest, Dale Dickey as the granny and Devon Bostick as the girl’s possibly also abused brother all fit the bill nicely.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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