The title “Close Your Eyes” hints at the profession of a footloose protagonist, Goran Visnjic as a hypnotherapist named Michael Strother. Following a sinister prologue, in which we glimpse a little girl fleeing from a pursuer across nocturnal cityscapes, Strother is introduced as a practitioner in London, specializing in patients who want to quit smoking.
Exhibit A, played by Shirley Henderson, turns out to be a police officer named Losey, who promptly pressures Strother into a private, unpaid consultation: an examination of the child from the prologue, now residing in a housing project with her parents but too traumatized to communicate.
Quite a bit of exposition awaits catch-up clarification in “Close Your Eyes.” The girl, Heather (Sophie Stuckey), turns out to be a tabloid celebrity, the subject of much public anxiety during a recent disappearance. Strother turns out to be a transplant from Seattle. He lost a patient under circumstances that sound more ludicrous than tragic when revealed. Strother and his pregnant wife Clara (Miranda Otto, reduced to token status in a role that never transcends the fretful) are residing in a somewhat shabby apartment with their young daughter Martha (Lauren Gabrielle Volpert).
Even though it’s a house call, Strother seems to score an immediate breakthrough with Heather. Sidling into her unconscious, he gets flashes that place him in the telepathic vicinity of her abductors, eventually unmasked as a conspiracy of diabolical cultists, devoted to a founder who claims about 500 years of immortality. His followers prefer to sacrifice victims in abandoned churches; they pride themselves on bloodcurdling atrocities, such as injecting incompatible blood types into the veins of their captives.
Recognizing that this method might not be dynamic enough for his purposes, director Nick Willing depicts one informant encountered by Strother and Losey getting tortured to death in his own shop; a rat sewn into his innards polishes off the punishment. “Willing To Disable and Butcher” might make a snappy business card slogan for Mr. Willing. He’s also more than willing to scatter red herrings with reckless abandon.
The willing suspension of disbelief, a chronic sore point in “Close Your Eyes,” takes a beating along with selected characters. As a rule, Mr. Willing accounts for mystification with supernatural bombast and seems most confident when binding someone to a table and getting busy with instruments that puncture or sear the flesh.
There is a hint that “Close Your Eyes” is meant to be the prototype for a horror series, presumably in the “Omen” vein. Nipping this craven motive in the bud would be desirable. To the extent that the movie public ignores “Close Your Eyes,” it will do mankind a great kindness.
*1/2
TITLE: “Close Your Eyes”
RATING: R (Sustained ominous and morbid emphasis; occasional graphic violence, gruesome illustrative details and profanity; threats concentrated on a juvenile character)
CREDITS: Directed by Nick Willing. Screenplay by Mr. Willing and William Brookfield, based on the novel “Doctor Sleep” by Madison Smartt Bell. Cinematography by Peter Sova.
RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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