New Trailer For Lasse Hallstrom’s The Hypnotist Arrives

With the recent re-release of Lasse Hallstrom’s My Life As A Dog on Criterion Collection Blu-ray, as well as his latest work Salmon Fishing In The Yemen finally arriving on home video, Hallstrom may be seeing a second wind in his rather lengthy career. And now, we may have something that may very well stand to change the direction for this filmmaker.

The Swedish trailer for his Mikael Persbrandt-starring thriller The Hypnotist has arrived, and it looks unlike anything the director has ever made. A thriller through and through, the mood is new for Hallstrom, whose recent work has seemed to be much brighter and glossier, almost melodramatic in a way, particularly a film like Dear John, a film I can’t stand. I think the cast here is great, and based on Lars Kepler’s beloved novel, the film looks to be just what the film doctor’s ordered for Hallstrom.

Without a distributor, the film’s domestic release is still up in the air, but don’t expect that to stay that way. Here’s the film’s synopsis:

In the middle of a dark December night, psychiatrist Erik Maria Bark is woken by a telephone call from a hospital in Stockholm. Detective Inspector Joona Linna asks for his immediate help in treating an unconscious patient suffering from acute trauma.  

He hopes that Erik will be able to communicate with the young boy through hypnosis, enabling the police to question him. They hope to find out who so brutally murdered his parents and younger sister, in order to track down and save his older sister before it is too late.

But it has been ten years since Erik last practised hypnosis, and he has promised never to do it again. Painful memories from that time make their presence felt, contributing to his decision not to help the police.

When Erik finally allows himself to be persuaded, it is as if the floodgates have been opened to a torrent of unforeseen happenings. Without warning this violent and inexplicable course of events impacts with full force on Erik’s life. His son disappears, and to have a chance of saving his life, Erik has to confront himself with the past, with the times when his research-work was laid in ruins and his marriage seemed on the verge of collapsing.

Source Twitch