Well this isn’t something we see commonly at the big screen – a possession horror film. A genre filled with mutants, ghosts and vampires is crying out for something a bit more grounded in reality. So we shall see what happens when you have a personality based horror flick about when you open up a magic demon possessed box…
Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the upcoming Red Dawn remake) is a gym teacher a few months fresh off his divorce. He gets to see his two daughters on weekends, and whilst at a garage sale the younger daughter Emily (in her debut role Natasha Calis) finds a mysterious box which has ancient writing all over and seems impossible to get into. After bringing the box back to her dad’s, Emily starts becoming erratic and strange things occur. The box is discovered to be a Dybbuk box and possess the spirit of a demon who has started to take over Emily, and so a race against time is on for Clyde to find help and rid his daughter of the evil spirit.
Morgan is simply fantastic as the divorcee who still clearly cares for his broken family whilst trying to move on with his life and career, never mind the demon possessing his youngest. He is really watchable drives the film on with a terrific performance, and is such a good actor that he should be in more films; he was a natural choice as the Comedian in Watchmen, his role in The Losers was excellently played, and such a gifted actor deserves bigger roles compared to poorer actors at the top of the Hollywood table; as he’s easily been one of the highlights in every film he’s been in.
Clyde’s ex Stephanie is played by Kyra Sedgwick (Man On A Ledge) and she’s okay as the stressed mother moving on, seeing other men but trying to maintain a decent level of communication with her ex for the sake of her daughters (in fact, her performance makes her a lot more sympathetic than the naff script makes her out to be.), but the two daughters are played by opposite ends of the child acting scale. Actually, that’s a bit harsh since the older daughter Hannah (Madison Davenport) isn’t particularly terrible and plays that overexcited, annoying, bratty, Glee-influenced teen quite well, and, though not bowled over by Calis’ performance, there were sparks of promise. There was a definite distance between the normal happy go lucky Em and the demon influenced Emily which, acting at a young age, may be hard to convey.
With this being a horror film about possession, it’s inevitably going to be compared to The Exorcist. There are more than one or two nods to it, in a decent tribute, with the most prominent being when Emily stands underneath a street light. It doesn’t rip it off though, and, in his American film debut, Danish director Ole Bornedal has admitted The Possession was inspired by The Exorcist’s subtlety; though in comparison, The Possession is anything but.
Bornedal creates a reasonable horror atmosphere throughout but there is hardly anything new to the genre; the focus is more on the divorce aspect of the storyline (which is only made interesting by Morgan’s performance), and it feels more of a family drama than something that is meant to be truly scary. As such, the interesting Dybbuk box idea is pushed aside slightly, and the lack of focus on this idea causes it to be forgotten about almost instantly ; as if it was crowbarred in out of nowhere at the end of the film (though The Evil Dead director, horror veteran, and producer, Sam Raimi was reportedly scared of seeing the real box in the flesh which may explain the sidelining).
A core problem of this horror is that it isn’t particularly scary; as with the more than capable hand of Raimi involved, you expect a lot more; it’s basically implied horror in seeing this little girl being taken over by this evil force with nothing visual until the very end. There are too many “easy” scares, over something really dark and horrible to sink your teeth into and feel uncomfortable. Then again, what’s here isn’t awful; there are enough thrills to appease most horror fans without feeling too short-changed.
My biggest critique of The Possession is the music; it’s spookily atmospheric enough in an acceptable orchestral arrangement by Anton Sanko, but the infuriation comes from the set timing of it; music supervisor Linda Cohen really should have put more effort into the organisation and timing of the emphasis of the music, because it is a bit of a cliché to have music in a horror film build up to a climax when something scary is about to happen, and the music this film just gives it away and forces the suggestion that “this next bit will be scary – react accordingly!” It’s too obvious, with no sense of subtlety at all.
Overall, The Possession is a Jeffrey Dean Morgan vehicle that gets stuck in the middle quality wise. Too good to say it’s not worth watching, but bad enough to not really recommend. There are better horror films out there but I’ve seen worse ones this summer. Morgan is easily the highlight here and drags this possessed film into watchable territory. Hopefully something will come along soon and break the spell of a lack of a decent horror film this year…
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
