Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on April 23, 2004, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
One has to wonder if Close Your Eyes is the best invitation for a distributor to extend to potential viewers, but it is nice that this 2002 production is finally opening under some title. Filmed as Doctor Sleep (after the name of its source novel by Madison Smartt Bell) and known as Hypnotic for a time, this British production applies theatrical film-worthy technical gloss and cast to a story that feels more akin to a direct-to-video thriller, with enough odd and spooky moments to make it worth a look for genre buffs.
Chief among the film’s pluses is a strong, sympathetic central performance by Goran Visnjic. The ER star plays a different sort of doctor here, a hypnotherapist named Michael Strother who has left the U.S. under questionable circumstances to set up an unlicensed practice in London. Director Nick Willing, who adapted Bell’s book with William Brookfield, wastes no time getting to the meat of the story: While planting anti-smoking suggestions in the mind of policewoman Janet Losey (Shirley Henderson) in the movie’s early minutes, her psyche hands him back an image of a terrified young girl. The child is revealed to be the only survivor of a string of recent slayings called the Tattoo Murders (after the skin art found applied to the victims), and Losey, sensing Strother’s psychic gifts, enlists him in the investigation.
Willing brings a commendable narrative economy to what follows, which helps because the situations have become familiar from the countless serial-killer/procedural thrillers of the past decade. There’s the protagonist with a troubling event in his past doled out in deliberately placed flashbacks, the ambitious up-and-coming cop chafing under a harsh-spoken superior, the eccentric local expert who helps with information (but is fated not to last long enough to share the most crucial tips) and the fact that the hero, tracking a child murderer, has a vulnerable daughter of his own and a wife who’s heavily pregnant, to boot. A good cast also sustains interest, with the amusingly edgy Henderson playing well off the grimly determined Visnjic, Paddy Considine (in a role he filmed before his acclaimed turn in last year’s In America) lending humanity to his odd military-replica enthusiast and Sophie Stuckey convincingly haunted as the little girl at the center of the mystery.
While the middle hour is devoted to following the pieces of the investigation as they click into place, the first and last reels contain more interesting stuff. It’s a shame the hypnosis angle is pretty much left behind after the first half hour and only crops up again at the end, as Willing finds evocative ways of presenting it, with sharp visuals and editing (by Niven Howie, who also cut The Hole, next week’s Godsend and the Dawn of the Dead remake). There’s a mild supernatural angle percolating beneath the surface of the story that finally comes to the fore during the climactic scenes, which are more graphic than what has come before but don’t upset Willing’s overall tone, which is more dependent on suggestion than splatter.
For the most part, Close Your Eyes’ familiarity breeds, not contempt, but a modest level of interest in how the story will play out and whether it will wring any true surprises from the material. It only does so on occasion (though not in its final twist), but it nonetheless holds the attention, always feels professional and was clearly made by people who believed in the material. In short, you may not close your eyes in fright, but the movie won’t make you close them in sleep either.
