6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.9 |
A woman's husband collides with his brother in a freak car accident, landing both of them into comas. Complications arise when the brother wakes and believes that he is the woman's husband.
Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Lee Pace, Michael Landes, Tuva Novotny, Chelah HorsdalHorror | 100% |
Mystery | 15% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
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!
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.
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.
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)
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.
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