The Possession

An unoriginal title for an uninspired plot.

Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Natasha Calis, Kyra Sedgwick

Genre: Horror

The Possession depicts the story of Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a recently divorced father, who after moving house acquires a box housing an ancient poltergeist from a local yard sale. As you do. In typical horror convention, his young daughter Emily (Natasha Calis) develops a dangerous obsession with the box and is subsequently overtaken by the demon living inside. Even with the incorporation of a Pandora’s Box type theme, the film struggles to provide a much needed twist to the ‘young girl is possessed’ storyline, and struggles to represent itself as anything other than a low-rate replica of The Exorcist.

Whilst The Possession was never boring, it was never, well, scary. In a film dominated by cheap ‘jumpy’ moments, it often becomes frustrating that the film depends so drastically on loud noises to generate any suspense or horror. Genuinely frightening moments such as the appearance of the fingers from inside Emily’s throat are few and far between, which often leaves the audience feeling cheated.  Aside from second-rate scare tactics, scenes intended to scare were often laughable, predominantly those involving ridiculous images of old women rolling around the floor and doing some form of demonic yoga. Ironically, these scenes could be classed as some of the film’s best moments, as they were at least appreciated by the cinema audience for their much needed comic relief.

As with too many products of the horror genre, The Possession exhibits the belief that the phrase ‘based on a true story’ is enough to secure a fully formed and successful plot. Although horror films often allow more scope with storylines, the resounding laziness and unfeasibility of this film’s plotline was often hard to overlook. In one particular scene, Emily scales a large building in order to retain her beloved box.  Unless the entity inside the girl was in fact Spider-Man, I find this scene rather difficult to believe. In another nonsensical scene, the face of the poltergeist can be seen moving around in an x-ray of the young girl’s body. Since when can demons be captured on CAT scans? All too frequently the film creates irrational ways of lazily getting around the misguided, silly plot.

In another example of idleness, staggeringly, none of the characters in the entire film were fully developed. Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character was too unbelievably one-dimensional to be at all likeable, whilst the character of eldest daughter Hannah fulfilled no visible on-screen purpose. Sub-plots and back-stories such as Clyde’s basketball career and Hannah’s dance troupe concert were never relevant or resolved, meaning they had no clear function in the narrative. By far the most bizarre development of the plot was the box’s relationship to the Jewish community; a plotline that arrived a mere twenty minutes before the end of the film, ensuring a rushed and weak climax. The ending was as disappointing as the rest of the film, borrowing too generously from The Exorcist as, in an identical twist, the spirit leaves the young girl and enters another being. CGI style images of the poltergeist (which interestingly looked like a baby despite earlier appearances of its full sized hands) were out of place in a low-budget film, and defied the basic horror principle of ‘less is more’ when revealing the monster.  The film predictably ends on a cliffhanger in order to - somewhat optimistically – pave the way for sequels which will tell the same story throughout various different films, each film declining in quality as the series trudges on.

Throughout the film I was frequently left wondering if The Possession was some kind of post-modern parody of itself. The transitions between scenes were so jagged and badly timed that it was unbelievable it was the work of even the most inexperienced amateur director. The editing throughout the film was more frightening than the plot, and attempts to create an edgy, scary mise-en-scene through slap-dash, careless editing fell short of the mark. Even if the sloppy editing could be forgiven, the poor dialogue could not. Classic lines such as “Stay away from my kid’s teeth!” made it impossible to view the film in a serious light, whilst painfully clichéd dialogue like “I hate hospitals... people die here” saturated the film, once and for all rendering The Possession a predictable, laughable and rather forgettable film.

Summary: Run-of-the-mill horror flick combining recycled plotlines with terrible dialogue.

VERDICT: 4/10