7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Possessor follows an agent who works for a secretive organization that uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people's bodies - ultimately driving them to commit assassinations for high-paying clients.
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuppence Middleton, Andrea Riseborough, Sean Bean, Christopher AbbottHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 10% |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (384 kbps)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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.
Possessor is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p 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 Blu-ray 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 rather interesting colorings utilized, including a kind of almost hellish orange-red tone that overlays several scenes with Colin. Cooler blue- greens are evident in some of the Tasya scenes, but there are also wide variances between lushly suffused moments and other moments which are almost desaturated. Perhaps surprisingly, then, detail levels tend to be very good to excellent throughout the presentation, all things considered. Especially in the better lit moments, fine detail is typically precise looking even in some of the more chaotically edited sequences. There are once again some minor flirtations with banding, first noticeable in some of the production mastheads.
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.
- Panic Attack (1080p; 3:46)
- Reid's In the Pool (1080p; 3:02)
- Wake Up and Count (1080p; 1:25)
- A Heightened World (1080p; 10:31)
- Identity Crisis (1080p; 14:43)
- The Joy of Practical (1080p; 12:12)
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.
2019
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