The Possession has left many cowering behind their seats in recent weeks, but is it all it’s cracked up to be? Below The Possession, which is rumoured to be loosely based on the myth of Pandora’s Box, is reviewed by Label Culture.
Yet another horror film about possession!
Following the story of a divorced couple, the crux of this film centres on their daughter’s (Em Brenek, played by Natasha Canis) discovery of an antique box said to imprison an evil spirit. Girl becomes possessed. Bad things happen. You’ve seen this a thousand times before, and even if you aren’t a fan of horror, it still blatantly screams ‘unimaginative’.
This film not only brings nothing new to the table, it milks the table dry of all elements and does so in the most tedious way you could possibly imagine. Although only short, it definitely does not feel that way, and by about half way through you will not be wanting any more. The first hour is full of cheap stunts that turn out to be either nothing, or simply not scary. Using a repetitive theme of insects, it is as though the film tries to force us to be frightened but fails at this. The bugs bite back; again and again until you become truly sick of seeing it!
Criticism aside, the makers of the US film do include some surprisingly good visual composition in places. Add to this the impressive sound effects that follow loud noises with abrupt silences and you have a relatively captive audience. However, these qualities are riddled with other bad sound effects, a horribly generic story and some seriously ridiculous scenes.
While Jeffrey Dean Morgan is to me the film’s superior actor, this is definitely not enough reason to go out and spend your hard-earned cash watching it. The final scenes appear to pick up ever so slightly whilst declining at the same time; making for complete and utter frustration. Performing the little girl’s exorcism, the town’s rabbi seems like more of a Comic Relief character if anything. Not what you want from a movie where the possessed girl is the only chilling component.
While The Possession provides a few fascinating qualities, they are not enough to save the entire film from the unbearably drawn out hour and a half it has taken from your life, making for an overall disappointing experience. If we’d have wanted to be spooked by insects, we’d have dug around in our back garden.
Our Rating: Two out of five.
