Robert Rodriguez’s Hypnotic plays around with memory, so it’s not surprising that its biggest twist had clues cleverly planted in it the whole time. Ben Affleck stars as Detective Danny Rourke whose daughter was kidnapped three years ago, and a string of bank robberies in Austin, Texas link her to the one man who may know where she is; William Fichtner’s Lev Dellrayne, a powerful Hypnotic with the ability to control other people’s minds. Both Rourke and Dellrayne are after the contents of a safe deposit box that contains a photo of Rourke’s daughter, Minnie, and the words, “Find Lev Dellrayne.”
Hypnotic’s big twist occurs a little over halfway through the movie when Rourke discovers he’s a Hypnotic too, and the words on the photograph are an anagram for “Deer Valley Lane,” where he placed Minnie, the most powerful Hypnotic of all, for her own protection from a secret government organization known as The Division before blocking out his own memory of the location. Rodriguez unveils twist after twist throughout the movie, but eagle-eyed fans can look back and spot clues to Rourke’s true identity. Past-Rourke made the photograph to trigger future-Rourke’s memories, and there are similar breadcrumbs for fans following his journey.
5 Rourke Has No Personality
From the moment Rourke is seen conversing with his therapist, he’s a study of sophomoric evasion, possibly numbed by the pain of his grief to the point that he’s just going through the motions. Affleck plays Rourke as a perfect cipher of a protagonist, and of all Hypnotic’s cast of characters, he’s an everyman who delivers his lines in the wooden staccato of sleep walking, which makes perfect sense after the reveal that he’s a Hypnotic who’s blocked core memories and experiences that make him who he is. After he breaks out of the simulation The Division has kept him, his robotic demeanor melts away, and he conveys true emotion.
4 The Domino Picture With Minnie
When Rourke leaves therapy, he looks at pictures of his daughter on his phone, one of which includes him setting up dominoes on the floor with Minnie. During Hypnotic’s ending, when he finds Minnie at Deer Valley Lane, in the care of his foster parents, she’s surrounded by an even more elaborate domino design, and using her mind to make them move. Rourke tried to help Minnie cultivate her abilities safely before The Division found out she was the daughter of two Hypnotics, but to the Rourke in the simulation, the picture just represented a fun day spent at home doing an activity with his daughter.
3 Rourke Could Always Control People’s Actions
During the bank robbery with Dellrayne, Rourke decides to go undercover as a customer who wants to open an account in order to gain access to the safe deposit boxes. A banker takes him into the room and then leaves him there because he misplaced keys that Rourke has already pilfered from him during their exchange. Rourke controls the situation with the monitoring detectives as well as the bank clerk, the biker at Diana’s psychic shop, and later during an interaction with Dellrayne. They are subtle interactions that convey Rourke’s almost invisible control in a way that suggests there’s more to his authority than being a simple police detective.
2 Minnie Doesn’t Look Like Her Mother
One of the clues that Rourke’s life isn’t what it seems is found in family pictures, where Minnie doesn’t look like her mother Vivian at all; she has olive skin and dark hair and eyes, whereas Vivian has blonde hair and blue eyes. When Rourke finds out that Vivian is in fact Diana, the brunette psychic who’s been helping him find Minnie obfuscated by Hypnotic abilities, it makes sense that Minnie would be their offspring. Rourke would have to be a Hypnotic just like Diana in order to have a daughter who is even more powerful than Dellrayne, with the ability to control multiple minds at once.
1 Rourke Recognizes Dellrayne
During the bank robbery, Rourke watches Dellrayne control a woman’s mind in security footage and says “that guy looks familiar,” presumably because he’s a well-known bank robber. After Rourke finds out that like Dellrayne, he’s a Hypnotic as well, and that Dellrayne is in control of The Division, knowing him from somewhere else makes sense, particularly since Dellrayne is the one keeping him securely locked in a simulation so that he’ll eventually reveal Minnie’s location. It also clarifies why Dellrayne interacts with Rourke during Hypnotic in a way that implies familiarity, rather than as though they’re interacting for the first time.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
