6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 4.1 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.2 |
Shortly after the divorce of her parents, teenager Emily buys an elaborately carved antique box at a yard sale. As her behavior grows increasingly bizarre in the weeks that follow, her father is forced to seek out the help of his ex-wife in a desperate attempt to end the curse that appears to be consuming the body and soul of their daughter.
Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Natasha Calis, Madison Davenport, MatisyahuHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 59% |
Supernatural | 39% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.41:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
It’s finally happened: my extremely rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew has paid off. Instead of struggling to haltingly
follow along in the chanted liturgy on High Holy Days, or stumbling through various Biblical passages to see what they
really are talking about, I am able to offer translations of the menu options on The Possession, which
some extremely clever disc author has offered in Hebrew until you select each individual entry, at which point they
magically transform into English (see the last screenshot accompanying this review). Well, okay, confession time: I can
transliterate
the Hebrew, but my wife, who
had a much more thorough education in Hebrew than I ever did, had to provide the actual translations. But here’s the
salient point about all of this: I was the child of a so-called “mixed marriage”, and wasn’t raised Jewish, with only the
slightest inkling of my Jewish heritage until I spent time with my Jewish relatives in New York City when I was a teen.
That experience really fostered an extreme interest in that side of my genetic history, but without “formal” education
really available to me, or frankly the desire to attend regular services, I turned instead to folklore and some of the really
interesting mystical writings that populate Jewish tradition to further my own self-directed education. Since I was also
a budding musician,
one of the first
folktales that caught my eye was one that none other than Leonard Bernstein adapted into a ballet in the mid-
seventies, choreographed by his longtime collaborator Jerome Robbins. The ballet was based on a 1914 play in Yiddish
appropriately called The Dybbuk by a playwright who became known as S. Ansky (the “S” stands for the
somewhat unwieldy Shloyme-Zanvl). Dybbuks are malevolent spirits which possess people and they have long been a
part of Jewish “ghost stories” and are at least somewhat related to very famous myths like that of the succubus Lilith.
But
back to the Hebrew on the disc menu: while whoever included Hebrew in the main menu options may have been
clever, they weren’t quite
clever enough. While the Hebrew here is more or less straightforward translations of the English words like
"Play Movie" and the like, there are some issues, shall we say. As many of you who don’t even have a
smattering of knowledge about any Semitic languages
will probably know, Hebrew is written and read right to left (as opposed to our language's left to right procedure), but
whoever translated the menu choices into English kept the Hebrew in an incorrect (and actually kind of laughable) left
to right formulation. My wife and I first became aware of this because Hebrew has several letters which take different
forms when they become the final letter of any given word. Those final forms should obviously be found on the
left of their attendant Hebrew word, since the left side is the end of the word. On the menu options we were
initially confused as to why these “finals”, as they’re called, were on the right side of the words, which really
should be the beginning. So not to pun horribly given the kind of Satanic element of The Possession, but as
they
say the devil’s in the details. Or, perhaps, maybe the devil made the disc author do it. Either way it’s a fitting metaphor
for how wrong headed this often silly film is.
The Possession is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.41:1. This is an intentionally desaturated looking film for the bulk of its running time, with an emphasis on Vancouver, B.C.'s brooding gray skies and kind of monochromatic mien. Therefore, very little really pops in terms of color or palette throughout the film. That said, the image here is very crisp and well defined, unless it's specifically designed not to be, as in a climactic scene in a red hued morgue. Close-ups reveal abundant fine detail and there are no real stability issues to report. Shadow detail remains fairly strong even in the many dimly lit interior scenes.
The Possession features a reasonably aggressive lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that relies on just about every sonic cliché you've come to expect from a film like this. Some of these undeniably provoke a startle effect (there's one at the beginning of the film, when the elderly owner of the "dibbuk box" approaches it, and an even bigger one in a horrifying scene at the film's end that I won't spoil here). Surround activity actually tends to be more effective in some of the relatively more quiet scenes, like when Dad and the girls return to their home to discover what looks like an intruder has been in the house (it's left unclear whether or not it's a raccoon or the nefarious "dibbuk"). Director Ole Bornedal evidently fell in love with the music of Estonian composer Arvo Part and had the film's composer Anton Sanko ape some of Part's compositions, so there are some moody piano cues that sound great.
The Possession is like a paint by numbers possession film, about as generic as its own title. Even its most ostensibly innovative element, its tie to Judaism, is just wasted in some laughable sequences that made me wonder when the congregation was going to break into a rousing rendition of "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof (come to think of it, "The Dybbuk" scans the same as "Tradition", someone ought to write a parody lyric). There are a few genuine scares scattered throughout this film, but not enough to overcome its formulaic and cliché ridden ambience.
2012
2013
2013
2013
2010
2015
2009
2012
Collector's Edition
1986
Unrated Director's Cut
2010
2012
2015
Theatrical + Unrated Alternate Cut
2007
1995
Unrated
2009
1982
Collector's Edition
2003
Extended Cut
2015
2014
2007