Based on a 2001 British made-for-TV movie, Danny Boyle’s Trance casts X-Men: First Class’ James McAvoy (presumably standing in for Ewan McGregor) as Simon, an art auctioneer who becomes a media hero for foiling the heist of an über-valuable painting, yet pays the price when the would-be thief, Franck (Vincent Cassel, Jason Bourne), comes looking for it.

Trouble is, the knock to the noggin Franck gives Simon during the fray results in a bout of amnesia. To jog the priceless artwork’s location from the recesses of Simon’s mind, Franck sends him to a hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson, Sin City).

From then on, viewers can question how much of what Boyle shows you can be trusted, as fragments of their hypnotizing sessions bleed into reality, and vice versa. While some may call this approach a mind-fuck, Trance emerges as too much of a mess to earn that badge.

Boyle sandwiched this baby in between his two-year planning stint as artistic director for the 2012 Olympics in London, and it shows. Whereas every twist and turn and layer of Christopher Nolan’s then-recent Inception felt meticulously graphed and charted and calculated, Trance feels as if its script pages were thrown into the air, and whatever Boyle caught, he shot and edited in that order.

The result is minor Boyle (as opposed to the major likes of Trainspotting). I admire sequences of the film while being somewhat cold on it as a whole. The theatricality of certain scenes is one plus, bearing influence of Boyle’s other Olympics side project, a UK stage production of a radically rebuilt Frankenstein. I think in particular of a scene where Simon hears Franck and his goons plotting against him in a loft above; he and we see the bad guys only as larger-than-life silhouettes amid butterscotch-colored light — a gorgeously structured image in a movie teeming with ugly deeds.

At least one of those scenes springs with a smidgen of goodwill, but it’s an unintended howler. I won’t spoil it, but you’ll know it when you see it. Or hear it, rather — just listen for the sound of an electric razor buzzing to life.

Art and artifice are Boyle’s ultimate themes, and he joyously maneuvers his characters so we’re constantly wondering, “Who’s manipulating whom?” The answer is that Boyle is manipulating his audience, but not skillfully enough that most viewers will be in the mood to be shifted and shoved. Trance is too slick and too empty for its own good. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Nefarious sells itself as a demonic-possession horror thriller. However, like Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas presenting as a family comedy, only to reveal itself as a two-person sermon on evangelical Christianity, so is Nefarious. Thou shall not bear false witness and all …

Serial killer Edward Wayne Brady (Sean Patrick Flanery, Saw 3D) is hours away from a blind date with the electric chair. Arriving at the prison, Dr. Martin (Jordan Belfi, Surrogates) is assigned to give Brady a psych evaluation, because the law states if he is insane, he cannot be executed. Seems like a big ol’ box that could’ve been checked anytime before the felon’s last day on earth, but just go with it.

Right away, Brady tells “ignorant sack of meat” Dr. Martin four incredibly bonkers things:
1. He wants to be executed.
2. But he can’t be killed.
3. Because he’s the devil.
4. Furthermore, the doc will commit three murders before the night’s through.

That’s a terrific setup, full of story possibilities. Instead, Brady and Martin sit and debate theology for an hour, with only the occasional potty, phone and/or smoke break for the doc. Brady not only works at convincing Martin of supernatural evil, but tries to get Martin to let the satanic spirit inhabit him and write the “dark gospel.” Their elongated conversation entails the kind of philosophical blabbering and muddy analogies one witnesses through clips of fundamentalist preachers at the pulpit or from the mentally ill on street corners, both using a ton of words to talk ’round and ’round the same circle.

I bear no built-in opposition to faith-based films … when they function as a movie first and impart a lesson second. Good examples of this can be found in the feature adaptations of Ted Dekker’s House and Thr3e (not to mention Dekker’s novels themselves). His stories are constructed with propulsive suspense, and viewers leave with a clear understanding of his message and beliefs without feeling like their head was held under bathwater by someone shouting demands for their repentance. (Another? William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. No, really.)

Shot in Oklahoma, Nefarious comes from Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon, who have found box-office riches with God’s Not Dead, God’s Not Dead 2, God’s Not Dead: We the People and — eventually, I presume — Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, God, Still Not Dead. While I haven’t seen any of those, I can say Nefarious’ preaching-to-the-choir moralizing struck me in an off-putting way I couldn’t put my finger on. Afterward (via Google, as the screener had no credits), I understood why: It’s based on a book by Steve Deace, the conservative talk show host, college dropout and election denier who rallies against “COVID-19 tyranny” and pronouns — the kind of hateful, ignorant, boogeyman politics that unfortunately seep into “the church” these days.

Speaking of fire and brimstone, Flanery admirably devotes his blinking, twitchy, stammering all to his performance. While he obviously has the showier part, he wipes the acting floor with Belfi, who at times seems to be impersonating Ben Stiller impersonating Tom Cruise, but seriously. Rounding out the cast is Deace’s boss, inflammatory, fact-bending conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck, playing himself. Judging from Beck’s extended, last-scene cameo to essentially plug Deace’s novel, the sartorial choices of multishirted serpent Steve Bannon have rubbed off on him, because I counted no fewer than four layers covering his torso. —Rod Lott

Opens in theaters April 14.