The Possession (2012)

Clyde and Stephanie Brenek (Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick) are divorced when we first meet them, passing their two daughters back and forth every weekend. The girls Em and Hannah (Natasha Calis and Madison Davenport) spend the weekends with their father. Em seems to think her parents will get back together. Hannah is not so sure. While shopping at a yard sale, Em purchases a strange carved box that won't opnen until the middle of the night. It is then that Em begins to hear voices. She becomes unnaturally attached to the box. Impossibly large amounts of moths overtake her room. She stabs her father with a fork at breakfast. It soon becomes clear that an evil spirit resides in the box and is attempting to use Em as a host. Clyde enlists the help of a young traditional Jewish man to seal the box permanently and hide it for good.

This is not the first exorcism movie Hollywood has churned out and it won't be the last. The best of all of them was, of course, William Freidkin's great masterpiece The Exorcist in 1973. That movie was so influential on the horror genre in general that every possession movie since then is automatically copying it. One of the most similar thematically, though, is The Possession. This new feature was directed by Ole Bernadel who has said that he approached the story from the viewpoint of the divorce, with the supernatural elements acting as an analogy of its effects. In other words, he made a dramatic movie, not a horror movie. This is both a blessing and a curse. First, by placing character above terror, he has made a movie that is more emotionally effective than most films of the genre can ever be. On the flipside, pretty much everyone going into the movie will be at least a little disappointed. Even I was not expecting to witness a movie that simply cannot be described as scary. I would say that it is definitely a chilling experience, but not scary. How much you will be unnerved depends on how uncomfortable you are with the subject of demons and the fact that the events of the film are being backed up as truth. Its most effective aspect is its realism. If this family did encounter a demon, this is most likely the way things would unfold. That has the potential of being more disturbing than a collection of jump scenes.

As I said, I don't think The Possession is very frightening. There are a handful of moments that should make any sane viewer a little uneasy, but if you're looking exclusively for scares, you should try elsewhere. I enjoyed the movie more than most people will because I appreciated its calm, logical progression and its emphasis on story above theatrics. At the same time, some of the drama doesn't work as well as it should and I wonder if upping the ante on some of the horror, especially in the climactic scenes, wouldn't have helped improve both sides of the coin. On the whole, I can safely recommend The Possession as a decent dramatic thriller, but not as a late-night screamfest.

7/10