Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Possession Blu-ray Movie Review

No need to have this predictable thriller in your possession.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater March 10, 2010

Behold this year’s early leading contender for most deceptive cover art! See the white, half-rotted face, with those sunken black pits for eyes—could this be the ubiquitous longhaired and vengeful female ghost that pops up in every one of these movies to wreak her revenge on the living? Ponder the “Fear Never Dies” tagline—it’s scary and morbid—and notice that Possession is brought to you by “The Executive Producers of The Ring and The Grudge.” All the elements of the image are designed to trick you into thinking that Possession is yet another chilly, atmospheric, Asian-inspired horror film. And yes, it is a loose remake of the little-seen 2002 Korean movie Addicted, but to call Possession a horror flick—or rather, imply that is one—is like marketing Precious as a feel-good rom-com. It just isn’t so. I’ll tell you this upfront—spoiler free—to spare you any confusion or disappointment: There is no ghost in Possession, especially not of the creepy, pale, skull-like variety suggested by the cover, and the film could, at best, be described as a tepid psychological thriller with a few lazy and ineffective jump scares mixed in.

Someone stop those streams of blood from mingling!

Former Vampire Slayer and now-hapless scream queen Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as Jess, a high-powered attorney with a seemingly enviable life. Her husband Ryan (Michael Landes) is a doting artist who leaves roses in her handbag, writes her weekly love letters in beautiful calligraphic script, and even pre-toothpastes her toothbrush to make her bedtime routine that much easier. What a guy! But naturally, there’s trouble in paradise. Ryan’s badass, convicted felon of a brother, Roman (Lee Pace), has come to live with the happy couple after being released from prison. We know he’s a no-good troublemaker because he scowls perpetually, has gnarly tattoos, and smokes inside the house. He’s pretty much a total tool, the kind of guy who comes down to the kitchen in the morning, drinks all the juice, puts the empty jar back in the refrigerator and then tells his sister-in-law, “We’re out of juice.” I’m not just making this up as an example; he actually does it, and yes, it’s as melodramatic and overplayed as it sounds. He also seems to have eyes for Jess, although she’s seriously and understandably creeped out by his sexually charged, this dead-eyed stare means I could rape you if I wanted antagonism. Roman eventually takes the hint, leaves the house in a huff, and as he drives across the fog- covered Golden Gate Bridge, he accidentally hits his brother head-on in what has to be one of the most improbable car crashes in cinematic history. Really, what are the odds that the two of them would just happen to be passing each other in the opposite direction? Not even the famous San Francisco Bay-spanning bridge, with its massive steel cables and trusses, could hold the amount of disbelief Possession requires its audience to suspend.

Now, buckle your safety belts readers, as here comes the movie’s core conceit. That previous paragraph? That’s just the first act of this three-act tragedy. And I mean tragedy in the most pejorative, this is truly an awful film sense imaginable. Both brothers lie in a coma for several months, and when bad brother Roman wakes up—his face covered with an extremely fake-looking beard—he believes that he’s Ryan. More so, he goes to great lengths to convince Jess that he’s her husband, transplanted somehow into Roman’s body. It’s as if their souls were swapped in the accident, and indeed, we flash back to the scene of the crash and watch in…horror? No, that’s not right. How about this: We watch with jaded bemusement as Ryan and Roman’s blood mingles on the asphalt between their battered bodies. Could it be? Is it possible? Has some miracle occurred, giving Jess and Ryan a new lease on life, or is Roman just a manipulative ex-con who would go to great, truly ridiculous lengths to steal his brother’s woman? The film trudges half-heartedly toward its obligatory final twist, but if you haven’t figured it all out by the 50-minute mark you’ve either been doing your taxes while watching the film—and honestly, I’d almost rather organize my receipts than watch Possession again—or you’re just as comatose as Ryan.

Swedish co-directors Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist go for the glossy Hollywood horror look of The Grudge, but their visual storytelling is as heavy-handed as the plot is dull. Baldly obvious “symbolic” imagery abounds—lots of mirrors, masks, and doubled faces—but if a series of interlocked metaphors and allusions can be called a rich tapestry of meaning, what we have here amounts to the symbolic equivalent of the ratty patchwork throw rug you have in your laundry room. I can’t tell if they’re just showing off or if they really think we’ll be unsettled and awed by stop-motion sequences of rotting roses. Oh! I get it! Their love has withered away and died. How powerful. And yet, the film’s visual language is only the beginning of the blatancy. The acting is about as subtle as a jump scare. Gellar hoofs it through the production mostly wearing her weary worried face—presumably concerned for the state of her career, which is slowly entering straight-to-video territory—and her lovey-dovey romance scenes with Michael Landes are more sickeningly sweet than the iced tea at McDonalds. While Pushing Daisies’ Lee Pace gives his character some initially interesting ambiguity after the car crash, his tough guy shtick at the beginning is strained and even a little laughable. The same goes for the directors’ attempts to pepper the flavorless plot with scares, which nearly all involve some character lunging into frame or appearing as a dark shadow in the background, accompanied by a Psycho-like violin stab. Let me repeat: There are no ghosts here, no black-haired apparitions or ghoulish visages, no matter what the cover art is trying to sell you. The scariest scene in Possession involves a wetsuit. Yes, a wetsuit. Is the wetsuit possessed? No, but that would probably make for a better film.

Possession Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Originally slated to head straight-to-video in May 2009, the film ended up getting limited theatrical releases in Portugal and Israel—of all places—and has now been quietly put to pasture on Blu-ray by 20th Century Fox. For what it's worth, the film's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer isn't half bad. Since Possession is a "horror" movie, the image is somewhat drab, with dark, detail-obscuring blacks and an intentionally dreary color palette, but clarity is surprisingly strong throughout—see the texture of Ryan's suede jacket or the detail in Roman's hoodie as he talks on his cell phone in the rain. While the picture is never strikingly clear or impressively deep, it is nicely resolved and quite clean, with a fine grain structure and no specks or flecks on the print. Likewise, compression and transfer-related anomalies like banding, aliasing, and macroblocking are completely absent. There are a few odd choices, like the oversaturated colors during one particular flashback scene or the incredibly grainy stock aerial footage of San Francisco, but if you just have to see Possession, for whatever reason—don't worry, I won't judge you—you should be relatively pleased by the film's picture quality.

Possession Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Similarly, Possession's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track isn't going to tax your speakers and rattle your walls, but it does show that more thought went into the sound design for the film than for its flimsy plot. The fact that it's raining quite often in the story gives the rear speakers a reason to pump out outdoorsy ambience, and you'll sometimes hear a non-obtrusive cross-channel effect, like a car passing from the left to right. The big accident on the bridge is an underwhelming sonic experience, and much of the film features the kind of impressionistic sound design that's become commonplace in horror films—disembodied voices swirling through the rears, a menacingly low LFE drone, the occasional jitter or scratch, and of course, the massive bump-in-the- night jump scares. The music also dips into the well of horror movie cliché, with simple piano melodies overlaid with unsettling strings, but at least it sounds okay, with strong bass and stalwart high-end clarity. As you would hope, voices are prioritized and all of the dialogue is easy to understand. No, this isn't the most immersive audio experience, but that's the least of Possession's worries.

Possession Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Featurette (SD, 3:34)
"The one thing about this movie," says Sarah Michele Geller, "is that it's exactly what you don't expect." Oh, really? Plus, you know a featurette is short and substance-free when it's simply titled "Featurette."

Deleted and Alternate Scenes (SD, 32:58)
Includes four extremely short deleted scenes plus a 30-minute alternate ending that's even less climactic and surprising than the one they went with.

Theatrical Trailer (SD, 2:26)

Possession Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I repeat: The cover art for Possession is nothing more than a not-so-clever marketing misdirect. There are no creepy faces here, no herky-jerky ghosts, and only the vague possibility of supernatural influence. What we get, instead, is a bland-as-unsweetened-oatmeal thriller with no real scares and a surfeit of soppy melodrama. The scariest thing about Possession is that someone coughed up the money to produce it.