The PossessionIf your little girl picks up a wooden box with Hebrew all over it at a yard sale, and somebody tries to charge you fifty-five bucks for it, just walk away. (Nobody's paying that for that ol' thing.) The Possession is a horror movie about said box, which apparently contains a demon called a "dybbuk". This demon possesses a young girl named Emily (Natasha Calis), after she acquires it while visiting with her father, a high school basketball coach named Clyde Brenek (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Predictably, the evil box starts talking to Emily, compelling her to do increasingly dreadful things, until Clyde recruits a young and determined Hasidic rabbi named Tzadok Shapir (Matisyahu), who offers to help Clyde save his daughter by way of an exorcism. (Now, how many fathers out there have thought of exorcising their teenage daughters before? Let's see a show of hands.)
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Have you seen The Exorcist? If you have, then you've seen a much better version of The Possession already. The only differences here are to the names and places--oh, and the religion in question, since a dybbuk is supposedly from Jewish mythology. The Possession is a compilation of predictable jump scares and story beats, filling in these moments of supernatural weirdness and screaming teenage girls with tepid drama. Perhaps the scariest part of this movie is that we have to endure two insufferable teenage daughters of Clyde's, the other being the snotty wannabe dancer, Hannah (Madison Davenport). (Emily seems overly obsessed with vegetarianism just because kids do the darnedest things!) Clyde has his girls on the weekends as a part of his divorce settlement between him and his ex-wife, the fastidious and emotionally inconsistent Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick). The Possession goes right into aping The Exorcist right after the opening prologue--of the prior owner of the dybbuk box getting tossed around like a ragdoll--by spending a significant part of the first act exploring the everyday lives of the Brenek family. Clyde is predictably more free-wheeling than his ex, who is obsessed with health food--a mania presumably cultivated by her new boyfriend, a germophobic orthodontist named Brett (Grant Show). ("Germophobic orthodontist"...that's a phrase...) Anyway, Clyde's got himself new house out in a half-built suburb where nobody else lives (what the?) and feeds his kids pizza despite their mom's protestations. There's some passive-aggressive divorcee banter about his boxes of stuff which he, somehow, still hasn't picked up after a year. But instead of reinforcing that demonic possession can happen to anyone at anytime in any walk of life--as it was in, you guessed it, The Exorcist--here it just feels like filler in a movie that is already on the brief side at an hour and a half long.
The Possession is ostensibly "based on a true story", but all that is "true" about this is how an internet phenomenon about a "haunted mini bar" sold on eBay that was reputed to have been possessed. I suppose that this was the actual "dybbuk box", but beyond this, the whole of this movie is otherwise pure fabrication. Similar to movies like Fargo, however, this creates a sense in the audience that something "like" this happened to someone somewhere. Sure, there are plenty of reported cases of demonic possession--or of victims with symptoms resembling it, at least--but one would think that this movie would have been at least a little more creative then with how it handles haunting and possession. For a perfect example of what I mean, just compare The Possession with a masterpiece like Hereditary, and the difference becomes obvious. The creepiness starts with the prologue, but doesn't return until Emily looks in on the same woman from the intro in a body cast freaking out at seeing the young girl with the box. Cue expected jump scare when she slaps the window with the palm of her hand while screaming. Next, Emily somehow manages to open the box, and takes out a few creepy totems--including a dead moth--that foreshadow darkness yet to come. And wouldn't you know it, a little later we have a set piece with hundreds of moths swarming around Emily as she creepily sits on her bed with the box. I appreciate foreshadowing, albeit foreshadowing that's a bit more subtle. Aside from the ring, which seems to take on more significance than it really has, moths become a motif for demonic infestation, and I'm sure you can guess how the wooden tooth relates to our "germophobic orthodontist". (Had to say it again.) Director Ole Bornedal has suggested that the story is more of a metaphor for divorce, but this movie is no Scenes from a Marriage. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan should thank his lucky stars for "The Walking Dead"--I actually thought he was Javier Bardem at first--because there's nothing that shines in this movie about Clyde. (Maybe if he had a baseball bat named "Lucille" it would have been more interesting.) He and Kyra Sedgwick are cursed (heheh) with mediocre roles that practically force them to mug some scenes. Just take when Stephanie is smacking Clyde after a possessed Em pretended that daddy dearest slapped her around. She pounds on his chest shouting "how could you do this?" in the most unconvincing way possible. Demon possession horror movies seem to come a dime a dozen, probably because of how cheaply they can be made. After all, a few flimsy special effects represents the entire technical budget, and the actors just need to flail around and talk like they've been rinsing with hot sauce to get that gravelly voice effect, and you're golden. So I suppose that, if nothing else, The Possession helps better movies stand out from other derivative dreck that clogs up our Netflix queues like this movie.
Recommended for: Fans of dull and uninspired horror movies, especially for those who have never seen the better movies that this one rips off. (It's unintentionally funny at times, I guess.) For what it's worth, The Possession is a pretty tame horror movie, all likely in the pursuit to keep its PG-13 rating. I guess if you want to creep out a (none-too-bright) teenager, you could show them this. Or if you wanted them to believe that all demon possession movies are garbage before they're old enough to learn otherwise, you could also inflict The Possession on them...you monster.
The Possession is ostensibly "based on a true story", but all that is "true" about this is how an internet phenomenon about a "haunted mini bar" sold on eBay that was reputed to have been possessed. I suppose that this was the actual "dybbuk box", but beyond this, the whole of this movie is otherwise pure fabrication. Similar to movies like Fargo, however, this creates a sense in the audience that something "like" this happened to someone somewhere. Sure, there are plenty of reported cases of demonic possession--or of victims with symptoms resembling it, at least--but one would think that this movie would have been at least a little more creative then with how it handles haunting and possession. For a perfect example of what I mean, just compare The Possession with a masterpiece like Hereditary, and the difference becomes obvious. The creepiness starts with the prologue, but doesn't return until Emily looks in on the same woman from the intro in a body cast freaking out at seeing the young girl with the box. Cue expected jump scare when she slaps the window with the palm of her hand while screaming. Next, Emily somehow manages to open the box, and takes out a few creepy totems--including a dead moth--that foreshadow darkness yet to come. And wouldn't you know it, a little later we have a set piece with hundreds of moths swarming around Emily as she creepily sits on her bed with the box. I appreciate foreshadowing, albeit foreshadowing that's a bit more subtle. Aside from the ring, which seems to take on more significance than it really has, moths become a motif for demonic infestation, and I'm sure you can guess how the wooden tooth relates to our "germophobic orthodontist". (Had to say it again.) Director Ole Bornedal has suggested that the story is more of a metaphor for divorce, but this movie is no Scenes from a Marriage. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan should thank his lucky stars for "The Walking Dead"--I actually thought he was Javier Bardem at first--because there's nothing that shines in this movie about Clyde. (Maybe if he had a baseball bat named "Lucille" it would have been more interesting.) He and Kyra Sedgwick are cursed (heheh) with mediocre roles that practically force them to mug some scenes. Just take when Stephanie is smacking Clyde after a possessed Em pretended that daddy dearest slapped her around. She pounds on his chest shouting "how could you do this?" in the most unconvincing way possible. Demon possession horror movies seem to come a dime a dozen, probably because of how cheaply they can be made. After all, a few flimsy special effects represents the entire technical budget, and the actors just need to flail around and talk like they've been rinsing with hot sauce to get that gravelly voice effect, and you're golden. So I suppose that, if nothing else, The Possession helps better movies stand out from other derivative dreck that clogs up our Netflix queues like this movie.
Recommended for: Fans of dull and uninspired horror movies, especially for those who have never seen the better movies that this one rips off. (It's unintentionally funny at times, I guess.) For what it's worth, The Possession is a pretty tame horror movie, all likely in the pursuit to keep its PG-13 rating. I guess if you want to creep out a (none-too-bright) teenager, you could show them this. Or if you wanted them to believe that all demon possession movies are garbage before they're old enough to learn otherwise, you could also inflict The Possession on them...you monster.