Review of The Possession (2012) by Ayden W — 12 Sep 2013

After Ole Bornedal's first English speaking, American made film was critically slated (Nightwatch), he returns in 2012 to direct a supernatural horror film, The Possession.

The Possession follows Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a man who seems to be in a state of emotional stress and turmoil after a divorce with his ex-wife Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick), ends in a typical, hostile manner. Luckily, Clyde has been blessed with two lovely daughters, Emily and Hannah (Natasha Calis and Madison Davenport), who are more than happy to accompany their father to his newly purchased home. One day the daughters are taken to a yard sale. The younger, and obviously stranger Emily, takes a fancy to an old, antique-fashion box: a dybbuk box, as we later learn. This dybbuk box has various words and phrases carved into it in Hebrew, and only tends to open, of course, when Emily is sleeping. The occurrences this haunted box creates cause a lot of negative supernatural effects on Emily, as well as causing psychological detriment to the family. We end up with a movie that's more like a drama; a bland film about a severely afflicted couple going through a rough divorce, who just happen to have a possessed daughter.

I say this movie is more like a drama than a horror, as the scares are minimal, and often never capitalise. If you're going to create a tense scene with suspenseful music and fixed camera shots (or in some cases no music at all), you must take advantage of that suspense you have created. Cutting to the next scene during an obviously essential part of a horror film, is very underwhelming and gets very predictable after it happens twice.

While the daughters are lovely and create sympathy, simply because they ARE young girls, their acting is sub-par and creates a lot of unintentional laughs. Of course, they are not the only ones to blame. They have been given an unoriginal and uneventful script, and Kyra Sedgwick as the mother has left us all wondering, (probably herself included), why she auditioned herself, or agreed to take part in this movie. She seems just as disinterested as the spirit who haunts her daughter; never WANTS their presence to be felt, never WANTS to capitalise on the moments they have been given to shine.

While The Possession contains ONE scary scene in the third act (albeit a cliche jump-scare scene in a dark room in an empty hospital), Bornedal brings no new scares to the supernatural/demon/possession genre. Instead, we have a generic, mainstream horror film that plays out more like an action film in the third act; where all hell tries to break loose. I shouldn't have gotten excited just because Raimi's name was on the poster. You let me down, Sam.