I've got an early notion: horror sub-genres are multiplying, and movies under them are parallel to their multiplication, populating. Of all the countless exorcism retakes, we are stranded in a rather familiar landscape each time a new to that kind of film comes out: child gets possessed, demon summons icky insects and makes ghastly voice impressions.
The Possession, while occasionally creepy, can be one of those films. Spectacularly clichéd, it is.
In it, we are thrust into a story of a family which already had a fair share of issues. Workaholic dad Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Watchmen) tries to move on from his broken marriage with ex-wife Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick, The Woodsman) while taking on parenting duties on weekends with her daughters Hannah and Em (Madison Davenport and Natasha Calis). Hannah is the diva-soul tweenteen while Em is the sweet animal-caring lass. After visiting a yard sale, Em brings home a mysterious box which contains of what will be an imminent terror.
Em starts to change, and while Clyde is dismissed for telling her other daughter and ex-spouse about this, he tries to demystify of what has happened to her sweet Em. Poor dad.
Ole Bornedal sits on the director chair of The Possession, a sometimes horrific, sometimes inevitably chuckable exorcism horror. Bornedal has made some films standing out (Nightwatch is the easiest to remember), but Possession isn't any of those. For whatsoever reasons, Bornedal takes on more of the been-there-done-that elements of possession horrors; voice changing, swallowing of insects, vomiting out a whole hand; yep, we've seen this already, if not in the sub-genre, in many horror films itself.
It is wrong to tell that the movie doesn't have something in it. Some scares are efficiently scaring. Some creeps are smoothly creeping. Some suspense are washed-out, but remains suspenseful. The problem here is, these don't last too long so the movie feels a bit dull and shallow.
Sam Raimi (Drag Me to Hell) helps in the production, and it's well obvious. Production value is intensely impressive if not in those rare moments, it's unbelievably laughable (our possessed kid rolls her eyes *yes, with the help of CGI* so we get a taste of what is a staple to the sub-genre: all-white-eyed possessed person).When Raimi is exec producing, everything goes spectacular. Or is it? Hm.
Morgan has always been a watchable actor. Sedgwick is efficiently annoying, her character's too dumb to pick Brett (Grant Show) over Clyde. Matisyahu plays a Jewish-rapper-exorcist, who is one of the few source of light in the film. Commendable is Ms. Calis, who is lovely as the former lass we knew, and admittedly freakish as the possessed kid.
The Possession churns out a familiar narrative of which pretension is it's just as like as The Exorcist, but so I'm told: it takes damn amount of S to stay even with the exorcism classic.
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