Delayed Reaction: Regression

Premise: A satanic scare leads to a town rocked by accusations of abuse and murder.

Watching Regression was a lot like watching a Law and Order re-run. Not a great episode, but, like, a really OK one. The beats are almost exactly the same, except everyone is a few degrees more famous than they would be on the show. Like, Ethan Hawke is absolutely on a crime procedural in another life. Hell, he's maybe a decade away from it in this life. Emma Watson is a few Harry Potter checks from needing parts like this early in her career. David Thewlis, Dale Dickey, and Aaron Ashmore have probably already played these exact roles on some crime show.

So, if you are watching Regression for genuine twists and thrills, you're out of luck.15 minutes into the movie, I was asking myself "wasn't regression therapy widely discredited for providing unreliable results and false memories?" Also, after Emma Watson's first appearance I thought, "It's odd to have Emma Watson play such a dull character. It must mean she's hiding something. She probably made it all up." And I should stress that I'm really not someone who figures out twists. I'd don't like being ahead of the movie. I let the story take me where it wants. I couldn't help it though, because the rhythms were so familiar that I knew in my bones what was going on.

Based on that comparison, the movie was about an hour longer than it needed to be (Given that a Law & Order episode is about 45 minutes). That's not to say the movie dragged. I'll regularly watch 6-hour SVU marathons without batting an eyelash, so 1h45m of it hardly registers. This is just an aggressively OK movie. Filler programming. Put it in a lineup with a dozen other Ethan Hawke movies and I'll have trouble remembering which one this was. Heck, I barely remember the difference between this and Emma Watson's other 2015 movie: Colonia.

No one stood out in the cast. Mostly, they play familiar roles that they are good at. Ethan Hawke is in more of a horror movie than he needs to be. Thewlis could've been a bit more pompous. Emma Watson isn't very good in this, but it's hardly her fault. She's purposely bland early on and when she's revealed as the villain all along, the reasoning is pretty lame. I like her, but she's never been particularly nasty. (I think The Bling Ring is the closest thing) I wonder how a Julia Garner could've done in this. I've seen her play both sides of this character before.

This is one of those movies that I understand the bad reviews even though I don't think they apply now. Had I watched this at a film festival or in a theater, I would've felt cheated somehow, because this is truly a movie to be stumbled upon in a Netflix or Amazon streaming queue. Or, 20 years ago, this would've been something I found on HBO at 9:45 pm on a Wednesday night and gotten stuck on, much like a Law & Order marathon on USA.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend