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| As you saw in the preview, spunky young Natasha Calis stabs Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the hand with a fork because she's all possessed and everything. What you did not see in the preview is that throughout the rest of the film Jeffrey Dean Morgan does not have a bandage or a wound or a scar or anything even though she stabbed him so hard that the fork was sticking out of his hand like it was a baked potato. The reason for this is that the filmmakers pretty much didn't give a shit. |
If you saw the previews, you already know that there’s an
ominous box, and a little girl, and a bad supernatural thing in the box that
gets into the little girl, and also some Hasidic Jews. If you didn’t know that, now you
do. Let’s take it from there.
Horror movies are allowed to be bad. More than any other kind of movie, a horror movie can suck and still be kind of enjoyable, if you like horror movies. In a few years, this movie will probably be played on cable TV on a Sunday afternoon, and if you’re feeling lazy perhaps you will lie on the couch in your sweatpants eating those little cheddar cheese goldfish crackers and then 92 minutes later you’ll watch the credits go up the screen and think, “well that happened,” and then, as is the case with such movies, it will be later in the day and you will have little cheesy yellow crumbs on your t-shirt. Which is totally fine, if you like that sort of thing.
The pitch meeting for “The Possession” must have gone something like this: “let’s make another ‘Exorcist,’ only with Hasidic Judaism!” There’s nothing wrong with that strategy (see: “let’s make another ‘Seven Samurai’ only with cowboys”) but it can be embarrassing to see somebody set a high bar and then trip over it. Or, in the case of this movie, just say fuck it and duck underneath the bar.
Sometimes when I’m bored during a movie, I try to imagine what it would be like if one element or another was subtracted from that movie. Would this emotional scene still be emotional without the music, or would it just appear ridiculous? Would that relationship still be interesting even if one of them wasn’t a vampire? A good movie can be built out of many parts that can’t stand on their own, but really great movies are often made of parts that work well individually.
In the case of “The Possession,” wedged in there, between all the tense silences punctuated by sudden noises and the eerily distorted faces in mirrors and the obligatory young girl in a nightgown speaking in a voice which is not her own, there is a little drama about a family reeling in the aftermath of a divorce.
Reader, I am here to tell you that this little sub-movie, if extracted and examined on its own, is so, so bad. For example, the following line was written by a writer and delivered by an actor and nobody anywhere along the line stood up like a mensch and stopped it from being included in the final film, which cost fifteen million dollars to make. Here is the line: “you’ve already torn this family apart! I’m not going to let you hurt the children!”
So I guess I’d say maybe skip this one. But in case it matters to you, THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONSISTS ENTIRELY OF SPOILERS.
Yeah, fuck it, here’s how it ends: after mommy’s new dentist boyfriend freaks out and drives away in his Prius and she and daddy make up and start working together, daddy goes to New York City and finds a nice young Hasidic man to come over and say “the power of Christ compels you” only in Hebrew and probably without the Christ part although I’m not sure since I don’t speak Hebrew, but anyway the big finale takes place when the bad spirit jumps into daddy and gets exorcised from there and we’re treated to the spectacle of Jeffrey Dean Morgan puking out this little gray homunculus that looks like a cross between Gollum and that Voldemort-fetus-thing from Harry Potter and it crawls back into the box that started all the trouble, but it’s really pissed off about having to do that. Then, right at the very end of the movie, there’s a plot twist that leaves the whole thing open for a sequel, which I can only assume will be released directly to DVD and will have a budget of considerably less than fifteen million dollars.
Horror movies are allowed to be bad. More than any other kind of movie, a horror movie can suck and still be kind of enjoyable, if you like horror movies. In a few years, this movie will probably be played on cable TV on a Sunday afternoon, and if you’re feeling lazy perhaps you will lie on the couch in your sweatpants eating those little cheddar cheese goldfish crackers and then 92 minutes later you’ll watch the credits go up the screen and think, “well that happened,” and then, as is the case with such movies, it will be later in the day and you will have little cheesy yellow crumbs on your t-shirt. Which is totally fine, if you like that sort of thing.
The pitch meeting for “The Possession” must have gone something like this: “let’s make another ‘Exorcist,’ only with Hasidic Judaism!” There’s nothing wrong with that strategy (see: “let’s make another ‘Seven Samurai’ only with cowboys”) but it can be embarrassing to see somebody set a high bar and then trip over it. Or, in the case of this movie, just say fuck it and duck underneath the bar.
Sometimes when I’m bored during a movie, I try to imagine what it would be like if one element or another was subtracted from that movie. Would this emotional scene still be emotional without the music, or would it just appear ridiculous? Would that relationship still be interesting even if one of them wasn’t a vampire? A good movie can be built out of many parts that can’t stand on their own, but really great movies are often made of parts that work well individually.
In the case of “The Possession,” wedged in there, between all the tense silences punctuated by sudden noises and the eerily distorted faces in mirrors and the obligatory young girl in a nightgown speaking in a voice which is not her own, there is a little drama about a family reeling in the aftermath of a divorce.
Reader, I am here to tell you that this little sub-movie, if extracted and examined on its own, is so, so bad. For example, the following line was written by a writer and delivered by an actor and nobody anywhere along the line stood up like a mensch and stopped it from being included in the final film, which cost fifteen million dollars to make. Here is the line: “you’ve already torn this family apart! I’m not going to let you hurt the children!”
So I guess I’d say maybe skip this one. But in case it matters to you, THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONSISTS ENTIRELY OF SPOILERS.
Yeah, fuck it, here’s how it ends: after mommy’s new dentist boyfriend freaks out and drives away in his Prius and she and daddy make up and start working together, daddy goes to New York City and finds a nice young Hasidic man to come over and say “the power of Christ compels you” only in Hebrew and probably without the Christ part although I’m not sure since I don’t speak Hebrew, but anyway the big finale takes place when the bad spirit jumps into daddy and gets exorcised from there and we’re treated to the spectacle of Jeffrey Dean Morgan puking out this little gray homunculus that looks like a cross between Gollum and that Voldemort-fetus-thing from Harry Potter and it crawls back into the box that started all the trouble, but it’s really pissed off about having to do that. Then, right at the very end of the movie, there’s a plot twist that leaves the whole thing open for a sequel, which I can only assume will be released directly to DVD and will have a budget of considerably less than fifteen million dollars.
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