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Writer/director Alejandro Amenábar (The Others) would like you to believe that Regression is based on a true story, probably hoping to elevate its solemn silliness into the plausible. It doesn’t work. Yes, in the 1980s and 1990s, mass hysteria about Satanic cults murdering babies (and worse) did indeed sweep the U.S. But the details of this story are wholly invented, and where Amenábar takes them does no justice to the phenomenon, and ends up in a place that is repulsive, and perhaps even dangerous. In 1990 Minnesota, cop Kenner (Ethan Hawke) begins investigating a case of child abuse against a teenager (Emma Watson), and eventually unravels what looks to be a vast Satanic conspiracy in the small town. Preposterousness rules: It’s appallingly unlikely, say, that the shrink (David Thewlis ) Kenner brings in to interview victims doesn’t realize how much he’s leading them toward the answers he wants. Vulnerable, suggestible people in real similar cases did indeed “remember” things that never happened, but if those false memories were implanted in so blatant a way as we see here, Amenábar has missed a much bigger story.
Director: Alejandro Amenábar
Producer: Alejandro Amenábar, Christina Piovesan, Fernando Bovaira, Simón de Santiago, Alex Lalonde, Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Ghislain Barrois, Axel Kuschevatzky and Noah Segal
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson, David Thewlis, Lothaire Bluteau, Dale Dickey, David Dencik, Peter MacNeill, Devon Bostick, Aaron Ashmore and Kristian Bruun
Producer: Alejandro Amenábar, Christina Piovesan, Fernando Bovaira, Simón de Santiago, Alex Lalonde, Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Ghislain Barrois, Axel Kuschevatzky and Noah Segal
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson, David Thewlis, Lothaire Bluteau, Dale Dickey, David Dencik, Peter MacNeill, Devon Bostick, Aaron Ashmore and Kristian Bruun
