Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Possessor 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 29, 2020

While it may strike some as being too facile to sum up Possessor with a "like father, like son" maxim, that description may well suffice as well as any for prospective audience members coming to this film without any foreknowledge about it, since in several salient ways this is very much like a David Cronenberg outing. It perhaps goes without saying, then, that Possessor's writer and director Brandon Cronenberg is indeed the son of David Cronenberg, and in this case the cinematic apple has not fallen far from that particular tree, with Possessor offering a glut of weird, often disturbing, imagery bound up in a plot that in more ways than one might be termed mind bending. One of those ways involves actual minds within the story, since the major sci-fi conceit of Possessor is that there is a top secret quasi-black ops kind of organization that has in fact perfected a "mind control" technique whereby a host is, yes, possessed by a controller connected via a (largely unexplained) VR-esque mask apparatus to an implant in the host's brain. That aspect isn't initially disclosed in Possessor, which instead opens with a chilling vignette featuring a "victim" of the mind control technique, a young black gymnast who ends up slaughtering a guy in just the first of several incredibly graphic scenes of violence the film employs.

That scene of carnage suddenly gives way to a sterile lab environment where a woman named Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is removed from the VR-esque machine. It's not initially disclosed overtly what exactly is going on, though Cronenberg's writing is strong enough that it's almost intuitively obvious that Tasya has been in control of the girl seen committing the brutal slaying in the film's opening sequence. Tasya is debriefed by her manager, Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who takes Tasya through a series of "memory tests" to determine whether she's rightfully back in her own mind with her own experiences at her beck and call. There's some telling dialogue in this scene which is repeated toward the end of the story, with one important omission, which, in this introductory iteration at least, suggests that while Tasya is back in her own mind, it's a mind roiled with conflict and increasing dissociation. The fact that each "possession" is actually designed to enact what amounts to a contract killing, and that the preferred method for a possessor to "disconnect" from the possessed is to have the possessed commit suicide, an action Tasya was not able to force the girl in the opening sequence to do, suggests that even Tasya's possessions have some "sticking points".

Tasya tells Girder she wants some time off to reconnect with her estranged husband Michael (Rossif Sutherland) and son Ira (Gage Graham- Arbuthnot). That reunion is expectedly awkward and unsatisfying, but a new assignment soon pulls her back into Girder's orbit. A high tech data mining firm which is run by a hard charging entrepreneur named John Parse (Sean Bean). John's stepson Reid (Christopher Jacot) wants both John and John's biological daughter Ava (Tuppence Middleton) out of the way so that Reid can take over the organization, and Girder is only too happy to comply, since she feels like she'll have some (blackmailing) bargaining chips to play down the line. Tasya is tasked with possessing the boyfriend of Ava, a guy named Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott) who works for Parse's organization.

That sets up the central conflict of the story, which turns out to be a power struggle for control of Colin's consciousness by Tasya and Colin. There are a number of subplots and sidebars woven into the tale, but the most arresting thing about the film may be its presentational flourishes in documenting what might be called the Persona-like melding of two different personalities (there's also some pretty overt and graphic depictions of sexuality in the film, as with at least one of the opening shots in the legendary Bergman film). Cronenberg weaves an intentionally hallucinogenic nightmare world where figures melt and morph into each other and where it's not always completely clear who is calling the shots, so to speak. While it may seem like Colin, like the poor (and never contextualized) girl in the opening scene, is a "victim" and so should hold sway over the audience's sympathies, it's part of Cronenberg's particular genius in Possessed that many audiences members may themselves feel conflicted over who, if anyone, is the "hero" of this disturbing tale, especially when violence spins out of control in almost unimaginable ways.

There's an undeniable emotionality to this film which is perhaps unexpected given its high tech ambience, but I kind of wished things had been pushed even a bit further in terms of the "struggle" between the possessor and the possessed, a plot point which struck me as somewhat curiously reminiscent of Get Out in its own way. In that regard, I think the film might have benefited, for example, with at least more than a passing reference to the girl in the opening scene being forced into her own "sunken place" as Tasya takes over. The film does do more of a job in that arena when dealing with Colin, but even here it's played in more of an almost horror setting than a strictly psychological one.

Possessor 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 1080 Blu-ray. Additional 1080 screenshots are available in our Possessor Blu-ray review.

Possessor is presented in 4K UHD courtesy of Well Go USA with a 2160p transfer in 1.78:1. Captured with a variety of cameras and finished at a 4K DI, this is a riot of styles and techniques, and as such needs to be accepted on its own decidedly heterogeneous terms. Quick cutting, skewed perspectives, wildly fluctuating contrast and palette saturation all contribute to a viewing experience that doesn't provide consistent detail levels, at least partially by design, but which is consistently arresting. One of the supplemental featurettes on the 1080 disc included in this package gets into some of the "practical" ways that the palette was tweaked, and so I'm loathe to mention "grading" (at least in its traditional sense), but there are a variety of colorings utilized here which are noticeably more nuanced than in the 1080 presentation. This includes the frequent orangish hues that accompany some of Colin's scenes, but it's also quite apparent in the cooler, almost blue-green, tones that are featured in, to cite just one example, Tasya's trip home. HDR also improves shadow detail in this version, including beefing up already nicely deep blacks. Fine detail is typically excellent, sometimes to gut wrenching effect in some of the kill scenes. As with some of the other 4K UHD releases put out by Well Go USA that I've reviewed, the intermittent banding that can afflict 1080 versions is noticeably absent here.

Possessor 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Possessor's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is a swirling, kaleidoscopic assault on the ears in much the same way the visuals are on the eyes. Voices (imaginary or otherwise) waft and crash, weird LFE-ish effects rumble on the low end, and all in all the sound design toes its own fine line between perceived reality and illusion. Some moments, as in the first debrief or even some later more or less straight ahead dialogue scenes, tend to relegate surround activity to passing ambient environmental effects, but when the possessions take place, things tend to become noticeably more immersive. Several of the significant kill scenes feature blades or other instruments of impalement, and the sound effects accompanying these scenes may be stomach churning for some. There are also some really cool if very subtle effects like the panning "waterfall" in the opening sequence (an effect which is discussed in some detail in one of the supplements on the 1080 disc). Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly for the most part, but part of the sound design is intentionally obfuscatory, adding to the overall discombobulation the viewer (and listener) is feeling along with both Tasya and Colin.

Possessor 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The 4K UHD disc has no supplementary features, and the score above reflects that deficit. The 1080 disc also packaged with this release of course features the supplements detailed in our Possessor Blu-ray review.

Possessor 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There evidently is a "cut" version of Possessor Well Go USA is releasing, though according to our database it's only one minute shorter than this unredacted outing, so the differences may be fairly minimal. That said, I personally wish a little more had actually been included in even this uncut version to help contextualize things, especially with regard to the possessed characters. Otherwise, though, this is a bracing, startling and often quite graphically disturbing film that should certainly appeal to fans of David Cronenberg in particular. Technical merits are solid, and Possessor comes Recommended.