The Possession is the one hundred thousandth possession horror film
of the year, and much like the ones that preceded it, is hysterically bad. But
don’t let that disappoint you because the film has enough unintentional
hilarity to derive some guilty pleasure out of it.
The first thing you’ll notice
about The Possession is how director
Ole Bornedal comes across like a crazy 12 year old fanboy of The Exorcist with a handheld camera who
wants to remake the iconic film with his friends in his home’s backyard. The
second thing you’ll notice is how the story was written after the film was
shot.
From the hacks who wrote Boogeyman and the Nicholas Cage masterpiece
Knowing comes a tale of young girl
who is possessed by a demon who makes her hurl expletives and contort her body
in weird ways. If that sounds like The
Exorcist, you’ll be surprised to know that The Possession is completely different – instead of Catholic
Churches, this time the ghosties come from a Hebrew box named dybbuk. The girl
buys the dybbuk box at a yard sale, much to the demon’s delight and the
ignominy of her dad (Jeffery Dean Morgan). As scary as a yard sale sounds, the
film then proceeds to borrow elements from not only the Bill Friedkin movie but
also from Drag me to hell, The seventh
sign and The unborn.
If there’s one thing that The Possession can be credited for is
that it is constantly idiotic. You are provided with a lot of laughs by the
time our heroic dad provides the biggest facepalm in a scene containing some
orthodox Jews. Hilariously, none of the characters seem to care when they
notice some paranormal activity around them – the dad is stabbed by his
daughter with a fork, but he just shrugs it off; when a bunch of doctors see an
MRI scan of the girl that shows a weird freaking living being inside her body,
they shrug it off. The film opens with a ‘Based on a true story’ title card,
perhaps director Bornedal’s idea was to tell us how indifferent modern American
dads and doctors are.
(First published in MiD Day)
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