Possessor (Brandon Cronenberg)

[Ezee E]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ee/Possessor_%28film%29_poster.jp g

WIKI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possessor_(film))

[megladon8]

Incredible.

[Ezee E]

Wow. Figured MC would've watched and discussed this.

[Dukefrukem]

Wow. Figured MC would've watched and discussed this.

8-0 Yays. No one likes discussing movies anymore I guess.

[Idioteque Stalker]

I watched it on a date, so while I liked it I don't have much to say because I was a little distracted.

[Irish]

8-0 Yays. No one likes discussing movies anymore I guess.

if it makes you feel better, i will watch it tonight and shit on it tomorrow. prolly have something to talk about ;)

[megladon8]

Hope you like it, Irish.

[Skitch]

I'm saving it for October.

[Irish]

I found this tedious and somehow both overwritten and underwritten.

Overwritten because the ideas it presents are single-issue-comic-book, short subject style. This could have easily been a 40 minute movie with no harm done to it. The first hour is dull relationship drama in a very indie-movie sorta way, peppered with multiple explanations around the tech. It's also repetitive in a way that's neither instructive nor interesting.

Underwritten because the characters are shallow, and the premise demands at least one of the leads have no agency. (The other doesn't either, it turns out, and somehow this doesn't effect the narrative; it just makes the affair much duller than it should be.)

Doubly underwritten because the climax requires the audience to feel for the characters, but how could I? I had no idea who these people were.

Hits its themes hard so no one can miss them, and then during a key sequence, uses flashy camera tricks and a $5 Halloween mask to suggest something about the characters --- instead of writing an actual dramatic scene and letting the actors act it.

You'd think a movie where a woman inhabits a man's body would have something to say about sex or gender. But nope.

The lead dude isn't a good enough actor to carry the material the way it needed to be carried. All his gasps and ticks were dead-eyed, evoking nothing. I had to remind myself he was meant to be 2 different people, a small fact that should have been continually reinforced through peformance but wasn't.

Or the script was so limited, it left the poor bastard with nothing to work with. I can't decide which.

I don't understand why a separate actor was cast to play the dude at all, when it would have been both visually and thematic more interesting to have the lead chick play both roles. It's a more obvious choice, and risks being gimmicky, but I think it could have worked. It certainly would have been more memorable.

A tasteless use of ultra violence, and for little purpose. I wouldn't expect hardened horror fans to flinch, but it seems like none of the critics even raised an eyebrow, and that's troubling.

Random elements are introduced then never addressed again. (Irritable bowel syndrome? Drug dealing backstory? Infidelity? Polyamory? Obvious surveillance? Nouveau riche dad? Amazon style shitty job? Why?)

Hard to watch without making obvious comparisons to Cronenberg the Elder. When your dad made "Scanners" and "Shivers," "Possessor" looks both super dumb and super ballsy.

To that: Cronenberg the Younger seems to think body horror means a close-up of somebody getting their teeth smashed in.

Shot in a very self conscious, unimaginative way. It's "I went to film school via an Apple ad" through and through.

The actual premise, such as it is, is pretty silly. Why do you need to inhabit some dude's body for days on end when he's just gonna break into someone's space and shoot them? You could get anybody to do that, no high tech gizmos required.

[megladon8]

Jesus.

[Dukefrukem]

Underwritten because the characters are shallow, and the premise demands at least one of the leads have no agency. (The other doesn't either, it turns out, and somehow this doesn't effect the narrative; it just makes the affair much duller than it should be.)

Doubly underwritten because the climax requires the audience to feel for the characters, but how could I? I had no idea who these people were.


This was the biggest problem for me. Why oh why do we have this woman being the best there is to inhabit someone else's body (and only because we are told so), when you could probably get a highly trained navy seal to do the assassinating and not have to worry about the aftershock of such murders. There seemed to be a huge psychologic piece that this woman was dealing with after we are introduced to the first murder and she's so mentally unstable, she can't even come clean about the technical problems she is having adjusting to the new body.

To top it off, she's going off script and killing these people with close combat... why? This is never explored.

This is the Aliens/Prometheus argument. Why send mentally untrained people to space to deal with end of the world type stakes?

[megladon8]

She was having trouble with the demands being made for her to separate herself entirely from her family. She still loved her ex and child. Which is why she cannot pull the trigger when she needs to exit the possessed body.

While I can maybe understand some of you guys' misgivings about the writing (I don't agree but I understand where you're coming from), the part about having trouble with why they are doing this in the first place and what wouldn't they just send in a soldier/agent reminds me a lot of my many-times-told story of my friend who hated Superman Returns because "it's not possible for a human to fly". It just seems like refusing to even try to engage with the world and ideas that the film is proposing.

I mean, it's an alternate history piece. We don't know what events transpired to have this type of technology available yet other common-to-2008 stuff not. So I'm willing to accept that there is some reason behind this technology and its use.

I get it if you would want that shown/told to you, but I didn't. I totally bought into the world and vibed with it.

[Irish]

There seemed to be a huge psychologic piece that this woman was dealing with after we are introduced to the first murder and she's so mentally unstable, she can't even come clean about the technical problems she is having adjusting to the new body.

This was another big problem for me. The movie starts with her physically wasted and emotionally numb already, so there's nowhere for her character to develop. The final scene offers the slightest change because that's all that's possible.

Likewise the dude. Since we never see him as himself, before the "possession," we don't know how much the takeover has changed him.


While I can maybe understand some of you guys' misgivings about the writing (I don't agree but I understand where you're coming from), the part about having trouble with why they are doing this in the first place and what wouldn't they just send in a soldier/agent reminds me a lot of my many-times-told story of my friend who hated Superman Returns because "it's not possible for a human to fly". It just seems like refusing to even try to engage with the world and ideas that the film is proposing.

More like saying the fantasy isn't plausible in context of the world they've constructed.

Right as the main plot kicks off, there's a typical superspy briefing scene where Jennifer Jason Leigh delivers some garbled exposition how they will use this dude and tank they company and end up owning it or something. I thought, cool, that makes sense. They need to possess this specific individual for a number of days to achieve some level of political intrigue or corporate espionage or something.

But instead, he just walks up and beats someone to death with a fireplace poker. That's it. That's the whole "mission." It seems an extraordinary amount of effort to achieve something so basic.

It's also not specific to that dude, ie, why possess him instead of a waiter or a security guard or some rando? Why set it up days in advance (or weeks, or months, considering Colin's planted "friend" at the Amazon factory)?

I might've bought into it more heavily, or brushed those concerns aside, if the rest of the movie were any good, but it's not. The writing has big problems both on the plot and thematic level.

[Dukefrukem]

This was another big problem for me. The movie starts with her physically wasted and emotionally numb already, so there's nowhere for her character to develop. The final scene offers the slightest change because that's all that's possible.

Likewise the dude. Since we never see him as himself, before the "possession," we don't know how much the takeover has changed him.


Good point. Show us a successful mission where everything was fine.. then lead into the problems....

[Irish]

Btw, Duke, you voted yay and seemed enthusiastic about this one, so I'd like to hear what you enjoyed about it? What worked for you?

[Dukefrukem]

Btw, Duke, you voted yay and seemed enthusiastic about this one, so I'd like to hear what you enjoyed about it? What worked for you?

I haven't finished my review but I did enjoy it. The things I mentioned above stood out as problems for me. Unexplored dilemmas that a marriage "separation" doesn't really explain. Does she enjoy her job? Does she hate it? Who knows.... The only oh shit moment for me was when her handler possesses her son, and ultimately got him killed..... Her reaction was.... emotionless.

[Irish]

gotta spread some rep around blah blah, but good points

i look forward to reading your review!

[Ivan Drago]

I was incredibly disappointed in this when I saw it a year ago. It sounds great, looks great & has a suffocating atmosphere, but is emotionally empty & takes itself so seriously when it has nothing of substance to say other than 'a lack of empathy makes us monsters'. Corners of the internet have elevated this as 'the next Mandy' when it doesn't have the creative worldbuilding, sympathetic characters and some level of fun to be had despite the melancholy.

[megladon8]

This is making me very sad.

[Spun Lepton]

I haven't finished my review but I did enjoy it. The things I mentioned above stood out as problems for me. Unexplored dilemmas that a marriage "separation" doesn't really explain. Does she enjoy her job? Does she hate it? Who knows.... The only oh shit moment for me was when her handler possesses her son, and ultimately got him killed..... Her reaction was.... emotionless.

Tasya's goal is to disconnect herself from her own emotions, to become a greater sociopath than she already is, thus becoming a better assassin. Showing no emotions at the end was the goal of her personal journey. She didn't want the family. She didn't want any more ties to her humanity.

Having a successful assassination at the beginning of the movie would not have worked, because that failure was the inciting incident for her story, BTW.

[Irish]

Tasya's goal is to disconnect herself from her own emotions, to become a greater sociopath than she already is, thus becoming a better assassin. Showing no emotions at the end was the goal of her personal journey. She didn't want the family. She didn't want any more ties to her humanity.

not sure that's accurate, or rather, it's more accurate for the jennifer jason leigh character.

if tasya wanted to distance herself from human emotion, then why go to the trouble of visiting her family, or practicing her responses beforehand? you'd only do either of those things if you gave a shit

[Spun Lepton]

not sure that's accurate, or rather, it's more accurate for the jennifer jason leigh character.

if tasya wanted to distance herself from human emotion, then why go to the trouble of visiting her family, or practicing her responses beforehand? you'd only do either of those things if you gave a shit

Because she does give a tiny shit at that point in the story. They are her last connection to anything human that's left within her. When she and Colin "meld together" after he destroys the implant, there's that moment where he sees her memory of her family and he seems to view that as an opportunity for revenge. But, it also seems that he's just helping her uncover her real desire to cut them from her life. Or maybe he's not, maybe he's the one in complete control and he just helps her realize her goal at the very end. Either way, it turns out they both want to murder her family later on in the story. Dark stuff.