Regression is a strange movie. It was written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar, a very talented filmmaker and the man responsible for Open Your Eyes, The Others and The Sea Inside. With that type of resume his film come with a certain expectation. The film’s male lead is Ethan Hawke, one of my favorite actors of all time. Opposite Hawke is the lovely Emma Watson, a very talented actress capable of carrying a movie. Joining Hawke and Watson are skilled character actors in David Thwelis and David Dencik playing supporting roles.

The story revolves around a detective (Hawke) and psychoanalyst (Thwelis) investigating a molestation case. A young girl (Watson) ran away from home and is staying at the local church. There she tells the reverend (Lothaire Bluteau) that her father (Dencik) touched her inappropriately. Once they bring the father in for questioning he vaguely seems to remember the situation but everything is kind of a blur. As they dig further they begin to uncover what may be a satanic cult and the daughter may have been part of some type of satanic ritual.

The skeleton of a really good movie is here. All the elements you would want are very much present. You’ve got a very good director, a great cast and a story that sounds interesting that could be potentially engaging. Unfortunately the movie never comes together and ends up being very, very boring.

The film isn’t overly long, but it feels like it. It comes in at under 2 hours, a pretty normal length for a dark thriller like this, but man does it crawl. It almost feels like it tries to have some Ti West-like pacing, but as it drags along most of what we witness just isn’t interesting. And going into this film I thought I could be entertained watching Ethan Hawke do anything, turns out that is not the case. Even Ethan Hawke can’t save nothingness.

It kind of feels like this was a first draft. Like Amenábar came up with a solid premise, wrote it out and said, “This is good enough, let’s get to filming!” And that’s too bad because the idea for a good movie exist, but it’s buried in what is ultimately a waste of talent. Maybe he thought they would spruce it up as they went?

There are also a few dumb things that happen. The movie takes place in Minnesota, but Hawke needs to speak to a possible witness who they determine is now living in Pittsburgh. Hawke just flies to Pittsburgh, finds him and detains him for questioning. Can he do that? He doesn’t team up with local authorities or anything. He wouldn’t have jurisdiction there, right? I’m no expert or anything, but this didn’t seem right. Maybe he teamed up with the Pittsburgh PD off-screen. I don’t know. During the questioning of this witness he says something like, “I’m a cop, so you have to talk to me.” That’s also not great dialogue. That’s first draft dialogue.

As boring as this movie is, I wouldn’t say it’s bad bad, but it’s certainly not good. This is very much a 2.5/5 movie, all across the board. There is a handful of kind of cool nightmare/dream sequences. They don’t really go anywhere, but they look kind of cool. The movie also has a bit of a moody atmosphere and it looks good but that’s about it.

Oh and the ending is terrible. It ends like an episode of Law and Order. So stupid.

You know who would like this movie, parents. This is a movie made for parents. My parents would watch this and probably enjoy it very much. If you’re a parent in your mid-50’s, this is a movie for you.

Regression is out now on Blu-ray and it’s an ok Blu-ray. It looks good as you would expect for a new film. There are 4 special features – ‘Bruce’s Obsession,’ ‘The Complexity of Angela,’ ‘The Case of Regression’ and ‘The Vision of Regression.’ The total runtime of these features comes in at just about 10 minutes and they’re all kind of similar, offering small breakdowns on specific elements of the film. Probably would have been better to just make one 10-minute feature.

Last thing – Ethan Hawke’s character is named Bruce Kenner. That’s kind of funny.

Regression is now out on Blu-ray from Starz/Anchor Bay.