The Possession

I've seen a lot of movies open with the phrase "Based on a true story", but The Possession is easily one of the more ludicrous films to come along that tried to convince me it was real. The movie is so overblown, it approaches unintentional comedy at times. It's about a little girl who becomes possessed by a demon after she buys an antique wooden box at a garage sale. As the demonic entity takes control of her, the poor girl's seemingly-oblivious parents hardly manage to notice, as they're too busy arguing over custody, and think her strange behavior is the result of their divorce. Something tells me this couple will not be winning parents of the year.

The little girl in question is sweet little Em (Natasha Calis), who starts hearing strange whispers coming from within the box almost as soon as she brings it home with her. We see what the box can do in the film's prologue scene, where it uses its evil powers to batter a little old lady. When it falls in Em's hands, her behavior starts to change. She becomes insanely possessive of the wooden treasure, turns anti-social at school, and starts to turn physically violent toward the kids at school, and even her father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), when she stabs his hand with a fork while at the breakfast table. It takes her dad way too long to figure out that there may be something supernatural at work. Not even seeing his daughter sitting in a room filled with moths that seemingly come from out of nowhere is not really enough to convince him that this is not supposed to be happening, and he chalks it up as a freak pest control incident.

The movie also takes way too long to tell us what has control of little Em. We eventually learn that it is a dybbuk, a creature from Jewish lore who steals the souls of children. It's around this point that the father finally starts looking for someone who can help him, though he oddly never thinks to go back to the guy who sold him the box in the first place. He turns to some rabbis for help, but the only one who will assist him is the hip young son of the rabbi who turned him down. The son is played by a Hasidic pop star named Matisyahu, who gives the film some much needed energy with his performance. Too bad the movie waits so long to introduce him. While the dad's racing around looking for help with his dybbuk problem, his ex-wife (Kyra Sedgwick) and her new dentist boyfriend continue to blame Em's behavior on adjusting to her parents separating. When the boyfriend finally gets a taste of Em's demonic power by having his teeth fall out in a bloody mess, he disappears from the movie, and we never hear from him again.

The Possession is a maddening film that offers little new to anyone who hasn't already seen the hundred or other so Exorcist knock offs that have come out of Hollywood. The characters are far too slow to catch on to what's going on around them, and not even developed in any successful way, so we never truly get behind their efforts to save their daughter from the demon that has control of her. Danish director Ole Bornedal also can't seem to think of an original way to tell his story, borrowing elements and images from a multitude of other horror movies. He's on total autopilot mode here, plugging in elements we expect in a movie like this, and not really surprising us in any way. He treats his movie as a greatest hits collection of horror movie cliches.

I've also grown increasingly tired of horror movies that try to make us jump by intensifying the volume on the soundtrack. There are a lot of times where nothing is really happening, but the movie tries to make us jump by pumping up the volume of a simple, everyday thing. It seems like a desperate act of a horror movie that's not really confident in itself, and wants to jolt its audience awake, because it knows it's taking too long to get to the stuff that's supposed to be scary. When the demonic stuff finally does take center stage, it's a big disappointment. Young Ms. Calis as the possessed Em just doesn't have what it takes to be terrifying. Likewise, the film's final moments are just a lot of noise and special effects that end up amounting to nothing all that special.

The Possession is cookie cutter, formulaic, and pretty much designed for the Labor Day weekend, when studios push out movies they don't have much faith in. It will offer some cheap jolts for the 13-year-olds who will likely flock to this, but anyone older or a veteran watcher of horror films will likely have seen it all before. There's just nothing new here. Move along, and wait for the next horror movie to hit theaters, hoping it will be better.

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