Affleck joked that his kids rarely watch his work -- but one of his girls said the thriller 'actually looks kind of interesting!'
Ben Affleck got good notes on his new film, Hypnotic, from some of his harshest critics -- his kids!
"My kids constantly make fun of me, and they won't watch any of my movies, but I showed them some clips from this and my daughter was like, 'That actually looks kind of interesting!'" the actor and director admitted in ET's exclusive look behind-the-scenes of the upcoming thriller. "So I thought that was the best review that I could get, and I hope audiences come away from it having really enjoyed the movie."
Affleck shares three kids with his ex wife, Jennifer Garner -- Violet, 17, Seraphina, 14, and Samuel, 11 -- but when it comes to Hypnotic, that's the brainchild of writer-director Robert Rodriguez, who wrote the first pass of the script all the way back in 2002.
The film stars Affleck as Austin police detective Danny Rourke, who goes searching for his abducted daughter only to uncover a secret government division of "hypnotics," powerful hypnotists trained to control people's minds.
An acclaimed director himself, Affleck praised Rodriguez's "bold" style in the thriller, noting that he used directorial techniques from both modern and classic suspense films to craft a movie that feels like "old fashioned filmmaking, that relied on the story and told the story in a certain style."
"He really wanted to do a kind of homage to Hitchcock," he continued. "He wanted to make this movie like the classic Hitchcock films -- letting the concept and directing be the special effects, in a way."
And while Affleck claims his kids don't watch any of his movies, Garner said in her recent Allure cover story that their teens usually have an easier time watching him onscreen than they do her.
"They don’t mind watching their dad, but they kind of want me to be their mom. They don’t want to see me upset and women cry more in what we do," she explained. "And they don’t really want to see me in a romantic thing."
Hypnotic is in theaters May 12.
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