By: Akanksha
Everyone has that one movie that they want to watch all over again without any prior knowledge about what’s going to happen in the end. That is exactly what the iconic Dutch cinema Pathé is hoping to achieve with its new cinema experience called “Pathé REWIND”. The event involves professional hypnotherapist, Victor Kraemer and thirty movie goers and will take place on Monday, November 9.
Following an initial announcement on October 26, those interested had to apply before October 29. The event will take place at the Pathé Buitenhof cinema in The Hague, The Netherlands.
By offering private online hypnosis sessions as well as group hypnosis in the cinema just before the screening starts, the theater hopes to erase memories of certain favorite movie moments to allow the audience to experience the twists, highs and shocking moments of the film as if they were watching it for the first time.
However, Pathé has not established that hypnosis can erase an existing memory or guarantee that participants will experience the film as new. The cinema describes REWIND as an experiment to explore whether hypnosis can recreate the excitement of a first viewing.
The experiment is connected to Pathé Classics, the cinema chain's programme that brings popular older films back to theatres.
Thirty people were chosen by the cinema chain to take part in the free event. Each person will have a one-on-one hypnosis session with professional hypnotherapist Victor Kraemer.
On November 9, thirty moviegoers will attend the Buitenhof cinema in The Hague. Just before the movie begins, Kraemer will perform another hypnosis session on the group. This will hopefully erase memories of a certain favorite movie, or suppress their memories of the story, giving them a fresh start. However, Pathé has admitted they are unsure if hypnosis can truly erase memories of a film.
According to Pathé's announcement, Kraemer has more than 30 years of experience specializing in hypnosis. Participants first receive individual online sessions before undergoing another session immediately before the screening.
Although Pathé calls REWIND an experiment, its announcement does not describe a formal scientific study, a validated memory assessment or an independent evaluation process. The company has also not guaranteed that hypnosis will work.
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Those who applied for the event were asked to choose from four popular movies:
The Matrix, directed by the Wachowskis
Se7en, directed by David Fincher
La La Land, directed by Damien Chazelle
Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan
However, participants will not watch all four films. Pathé will select one film based on the preferences of the participants, and the group will watch that film together.
Knowing the ending to a story can change how you experience the movie. For example, The Matrix gives a huge twist with the truth about reality, while Se7en builds up to a dark and heartbreaking ending. Famous plot twists such as Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s father in Star Wars and Bruce Willis’ Malcolm being dead throughout The Sixth Sense never hit as hard when seen for the second time.
As Imke van Schaaijk, Pathé Brand, PR & Communications Manager, told Dexerto, “Who wouldn’t want to watch their favorite movie for the very first time? We know many film lovers would love to.”
She further commented on how this connects with their retro cinema screenings: “We look for ways to give our visitors a unique cinema experience, for example with special screenings and Pathé Classics. With Rewind we are taking it one step further and trying to recreate that feeling of watching a film for the first time with our unique hypnosis experiment.”
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Cinemas have always been very creative with their tricks to get people into their seats. Modern-day cinemas use moving seats and effects (4DX), large panoramic screens (ScreenX), and Disney’s Infinity Vision.
In the past, William Castle, a horror director, used vibrating devices under the seats during his 1959 movie The Tingler. Smell-O-Vision was also used to spray scents into the cinema. Most recently Lionsgate got people to run on treadmills during the entire runtime of its Stephen King movie The Long Walk at the Culver Theater in Los Angeles. Anyone running slower than 3 miles per hour was kicked out. However, this is going one step further by affecting the audience’s memories.
Unlike these cinema experiences, Pathé REWIND attempts to influence how audiences remember a film rather than changing the physical environment in which they watch it.
Hypnosis is a technique that uses focused attention, relaxation and suggestion to influence a person's perceptions, feelings, thoughts or behavior. Its effects can vary between individuals, and not everyone responds to hypnotic suggestions in the same way.
A 1997 review titled Hypnosis, Memory and Amnesia, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and indexed in PubMed, examined the relationship between hypnosis and memory. The review explains that post-hypnotic amnesia can involve difficulty retrieving experiences rather than the destruction of stored memories.
The review also notes that implicit memory may remain intact even when a person cannot consciously recall an experience. This means that someone may struggle to remember something but still retain some recognition of it.1
Can Hypnosis Erase Memories or Only Affect Memory Retrieval?
Memory involves three broad processes:
Memory encoding: The process through which information is initially acquired.
Memory storage: The retention of information over time.
Memory retrieval: The process of accessing previously stored information.
Hypnotic amnesia should not automatically be interpreted as the erasure of a memory. A person experiencing difficulty recalling a film's plot does not necessarily mean that the information has been permanently removed from their memory.
However, the 1997 review primarily discusses post-hypnotic amnesia and memory experiments. It does not establish that hypnosis can reliably suppress an entire feature film from someone's memory.
Hypnosis can also influence how people recall and interpret past experiences. A 2025 review published in Frontiers in Psychology, titled Remembering What Did Not Happen: The Role of Hypnosis in Memory Recall and False Memories Formation, examined the relationship between hypnosis, memory recall and false memories.
The review discusses how suggestive techniques, guided imagery, expectations and misleading information may contribute to inaccurate recollections. It also highlights concerns about people becoming more confident in memories that may not accurately represent what happened.2
This is particularly relevant when discussing hypnosis and memory because a person's subjective experience of forgetting something does not independently establish that the original memory has been erased.
Although hypnosis is often seen as a party trick, it can be used clinically to help with pain, reduce anxiety and help with behavioral therapy. Clinical hypnosis may be used as a complementary approach alongside other treatments.
However, according to ComicBook.com the Mayo Clinic warns it can cause rare side effects such as sleeping problems, emotional distress and anxiety.
The Mayo Clinic also lists dizziness, headaches, nausea and excessive sleepiness among the possible adverse reactions. It cautions that hypnosis may not be suitable for some people with severe mental illness.3
As hypnosis is being used for entertainment purposes, ComicBook.com asked a number of questions:
They could be exposed to disturbing content. If people are put under hypnosis to change their minds and then shown a dark and graphic thriller like Se7en, it could be a bit of a creepy experience, similar to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
They may be influenced by the adverts. If the cinema plays their usual adverts and trailers after the group hypnosis, those in a suggestible state may leave wanting a Coca-Cola or chanting the Nicole Kidman cinema pledge.
The experiment also raises questions about participant screening, informed consent and the safeguards available if someone experiences discomfort during or after hypnosis. Pathé's public announcement does not provide detailed information about these procedures.
An important unanswered question is how the cinema intends to evaluate the outcome of REWIND.
A participant reporting that a familiar film felt new or that a plot twist surprised them would not, by itself, demonstrate that their previously formed memories had been erased.
To establish whether memory retrieval was affected, an assessment could compare participants' recollection of the film before and after hypnosis. Researchers would also need to distinguish between forgetting specific plot details, temporarily struggling to retrieve information and genuinely experiencing the film without anticipating its major developments.
Pathé's announcement does not specify whether participants will undergo memory assessments, whether an independent psychologist or neuroscientist will evaluate the results, or whether the findings will be published.
News of the experiment has caused a range of reactions from movie fans online.
Allison joked in the Metro that it is like they are doing ‘Eternal Sunshining’ to themselves to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Some people were worried that by erasing their nostalgia, they may not enjoy their favorite classic anymore. As Reid Southern asked online, “Can you imagine if they made you forget your favorite film, you watched it again, didn’t like it anymore because you’ve seen so many things since that copy that, it just seems really lame and derivative?” as reported by the Metro.
Many movie lovers saw the appeal. Ernie Tedeschi explained how he thinks comedies would benefit the most, “Seems like the best return on investment would be comedies. Imagine watching Airplane! again for the first time and not knowing any of the jokes.”
Jimmy Wong tweeted that one of the four movies on Pathé’s shortlist was one of the most mind-bending times he had in a cinema: “The Matrix was one of the [most] mind-bending times I’ve had in a cinema when I watched it for the first time aged 11 in 1999. Cool idea!”
Until the screening finishes in November, we won’t know which of the four movies they will watch or if anyone’s memories will be erased by Kraemer’s hypnosis.
The outcome will also raise a broader question about the difference between temporarily changing memory retrieval and actually erasing a stored memory. Without a defined assessment of participants' recollection, the experience alone may not establish which of these has occurred.
Whether the thirty lucky people leave the cinema in The Hague having truly experienced a classic for the first time or if it proves you can’t really erase memories of movies, Pathé REWIND is one of the strangest cinema experiments ever done.
Also Read: The Case for Having an Imperfect Memory: A Psychologist Explains
References:
1. Kihlstrom, John F. “Hypnosis, Memory and Amnesia.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 352, no. 1362 (1997): 1727–32.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1997.0155.
2. Leo, Donato Giuseppe, Davide Bruno, and Riccardo Proietti. “Remembering What Did Not Happen: The Role of Hypnosis in Memory Recall and False Memories Formation.” Frontiers in Psychology 16 (2025): 1433762.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1433762.
3. Mayo Clinic Staff. “Hypnosis.” Mayo Clinic. Last modified May 28, 2026. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hypnosis/about/pac-20394405.
(Rh/APC/MSM)
