The Possession (Ole Bornedal)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0431021/)

http://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/The_Possession_Quad.jpg

[Henry Gale]

Not sure why I saw this, but I did, and now I've made the thread.

It sucks.

Watching the trailer back, it plays more like a two and a half minute highlight reel of the only discernable and remotely engaging moments in the whole movie. I would've bet this was easily close to two hours, but IMDb claims it's only 92 minutes. I found one scene lit only by the light of a red Exit sign creepy, and that's about it. Almost everything else that attempts big scares or even building efficient atmosphere ends up feeling clumsily conceived with all lead-up, no payoff.

The only real thing I came away with here was a reminder that Jeffrey Dean Morgan deserves to be in better things. He ends up being the only person here embodying more than just a robotic archetype.

Apparently Sam Raimi produced this, but you have no sense of that from anything on screen. Everything is just so generic, by the numbers, and not even efficiently or interestingly retreaded, that I might as well have stayed home and watched Goyer's terrible The Unborn. At least that movie had weird dybbuk critters haunting Gary Oldman and Idris Elba with a quicker, more energetic screenplay.

And add this to the list of modern horror movies claiming to be based on a true story that could in no way back that up if they tried. Don't strive for realism if it means being this boring.

*½ / D

[Bosco B Thug]

I was ready to commit myself to watching this just to get the bad mainstream-horror taste of The Apparition out of my mouth, but I'll take this as a concerted warning. I figured since it got X number of fresh tomatoes versus The Apparition's zero, there might be a chance it would be enjoyable. But ew, can't waste any more time on tedium.

[Henry Gale]

I was ready to commit myself to watching this just to get the bad mainstream-horror taste of The Apparition out of my mouth, but I'll take this as a concerted warning. I figured since it got X number of fresh tomatoes versus The Apparition's zero, there might be a chance it would be enjoyable. But ew, can't waste any more time on tedium.

Yeah, it's really nothing worthwhile. I usually tend to be content with even really bad mainstream horror when it at least swings for the fences and commits enough to possibly become hilariously misguided or over the top. (Like The Fourth Kind is an absolutely horrible movie, but it's unlike anything I've ever seen in the ways it tries to scare its audience into believing its authenticity.) But in keeping with baseball analogies, this just feels like a series of bunts and walks.

The opening scene basically sums up what's wrong with it by consistently cutting and switching up angles of a very simple scene so much that it just feels like it's trying to rush things along and not show too much to maintain its PG-13 and 90 minute runtime in the meantime. The style of it just ends up being devoid of almost any tension, and it doesn't even have an appealing visual palette to back it up.

I guess I should have pushed a little harder to convince my friends to see Lawless. But even the word on that isn't as stellar as I'd hoped, and this movie seemed like it was going to be more fun.

[Bosco B Thug]

You know, for bad filmmaking, this is a special sort of bad filmmaking. If I didn't vote so fast, I may have given this a "Yay."

Hell, I enjoyed it. This is substance-free but pure commercial horror filmmaking. A visually compelling barrage of freakishness. Bornedal full of playfulness. Not good, but this exudes the interesting badness of 70s go-for-broke horror exploitation, when films were about sentient Native American tumors and evil dwarfs after Joan Collins.

Now on Netflix instant.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Damn it, I kinda liked this. It's nothing too inspired, but it's generally pretty, production-wise, and I thought Jeffrey Dean Morgan did a fine job as the worried dad.

[wigwam]

I liked it too and I loved the music, one of the best modern scores so far