Your main character is a basketball coach. You titled your film “The Possession.” And yet, the two have nothing to do with one another. Um … you do realize “possession” is a basketball term, right? It’s embarrassing when people have to be told their jobs.
Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is a divorced dad. A raising-the-deadbeat dad? His daughter Em (Natasha Calis) finds an evil-spirit enclosed box at a yard sale. The comedy raced through my mind at this moment:
“Um, hey, how much do you want for the evil box?”
“Two bucks.”
“All I’ve got is $1.50. Will you take $1.50?”
“No, no.”
“But look at her face; she really wants to unleash evil on a sleepy community.”
“I said $2. Now there’s a feller over there who lookin’ at this box earlier today … and I’m pretty sure he has a daughter interested in unleashin’ that thar evil, too.”
“For $1.50, can my daughter unleash just a little evil? She really wants to unleash evil here.”
“Now look here: I’m not piecemealing evil. Either give me $2 or evil just has to wait.”
I bet there’s a fantastic comedy sketch here. Back to the review:
Now, get this, there was this demon hanging around Poland possessing little Jewish Slavic girls 80 years ago. Huh. Being Jewish in Poland in the 1930s really kinda sucked, didn’t it? Anyhoo, the locals caught it and trapped it in a box that was sooooooo hard to open it took an American pre-teen almost 15 minutes. I’m hoping they never needed to mass market these things.
Bottom line: box gets opened, evil is unleashed, but he mostly likes to hang out in the girl’s chest cavity and make her break dishes. “Evil, that’s quite enough. Now go to your room.” Anyway, the dad gets blamed, ‘cause they have no dog, and the ex Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick)
takes away the kids. Dad can’t get ‘em back until he finds Matisyahu to sort out his Hassidic demon issues. That is to say JDM’s Hassidic demon issues. I’m not sure we cover any of Matisyahu’s Hassidic demon issues. Do you think there’s a rasta imp hanging out and smoking ganga in Matisyahu’s chest cavity?
From an admirer of filmmaking, I love possession films. Because they’re quality films? Oh, Hell no. What I like is seeing three or more distinct people on screen all overacting at the same time. You’ll get this in Act III every.single.exorcism.film. There is one good fright in Possession when Em looks deep into her own throat and finds fingers. Creepy. Kinda made me want to get the ipecac. But once you start along that road, you might not stop. Most of this pic made me want to hurl, but it had nothing to do with the ganga-smoking dude in my own chest cavity.
Once a girl discovered a box
Whose contents would knock off your socks
Upon releasing the pain,
The one thing in my brain,
“Hey Pandora, thanks for the pox”
Rated PG-13, 92 Minutes
D: Ole Bornedal
W: Juliet Snowden, Stiles White
Genre: Hassidic horror
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: I dunno, a golem, maybe.
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Fathers Against Damned Daughters (F.A.D.D.)
