The Possession of Hannah Grace

A better title for this would have been The Waiting Game, as it's one of those movies that makes the audience wait almost its entire running time for something to happen, and when it finally does, it feels like an afterthought.  The Possession of Hannah Grace lacks vision, a basic motive for its monster, characters, scope, and a reason to exist.  In other words, anything you might go to the movies for.

As the film opens, we witness the already-possessed Hannah (Kirby Johnson) tied to a bed and alternating between writhing about in pain and agony, and cackling wildly.  Two priests and the girl's father (Louis Herthum) stand over her bed, chanting verses, and occasionally splashing holy water in her face.  Hannah doesn't like this, so she levitates one of the priests with her demonic powers, and impales him upon a giant thorny crown of a Christ statue that happens to be in the room.  She's about to do the same to the other priest, when her father decides that enough is enough, and he smothers her with a pillow.  You know a movie is in trouble when the opening three minutes or so are a retread of every exorcism movie cliche in the book.  Originality is not what the filmmakers are going for here, but we hold out hope that at least some suspense could be in store.

Cut to three months later, and we're introduced to Megan (Shay Mitchell), a former cop who is trying to piece her life back together after she froze up during a situation, and her hesitation led to the death of her partner.  She got hooked on drugs and alcohol afterward, and lost her boyfriend (Grey Damon), but she's started going to support meetings, and is trying to start over.  A friend she made at the meetings (Stana Katic) happens to be a nurse at the local hospital, and helps Megan find a job when a position opens up on at the graveyard shift for the basement morgue area of the hospital.  Megan is shown the rounds of the basement, which looks more like a fortress, and is given the ins and outs of the job.  Of particular interest, all the lights in the basement are activated by motion sensors, which hints at what a majority of the scares in this movie will be built around.  I hope you like lights going on and off in your movies, because you will be seeing it.  A lot.

One night while on the job, Hannah's dead body is brought to the morgue, and a lot of weird stuff starts happening.  Those darn lights just won't stay on, there are weird noises, and when Megan puts Hannah in one of those lockers where they store the bodies, the door on her locker just won't stay shut.  Megan starts having creepy hallucinations (Or are they?), and even the people working the late shift around the hospital start disappearing.  Turns out Hannah's not as dead as advertised, and is now creeping around the hospital and lurking in the shadows for any unfortunate security guard or nurse who might be nearby.  The weird thing about this movie is that it never really seems to have a grasp on its own demon.  We're never told just exactly what or who is possessing Hannah Grace, or what it really wants.  At one point, someone asks the reasonable question of why hasn't the monster killed Megan, since she's the only one working down in the morgue, and the movie never supplies an answer.

Here's another thing.  We sometimes see the demonic Hannah entering elevators and using stairs to get around in some scenes, and in other scenes, it can seemingly teleport and pop up in front of its victims from out of nowhere.  She also seemingly can get around to any part of the hospital (the roof, the stairwells), and immediately return to the morgue where she pretends to be dead every time Megan checks on her.  But why, exactly?  If she can freely move about, why doesn't just she immediately kill Megan?  That way, she doesn't have to do the whole "play dead" act, and can just pick off everybody at her leisure.  Whenever the dead Hannah starts walking around under the control of the demon, we can hear her bones pop and snap with every move she makes.  This might have been creepy, if only it didn't sound like a Foley Artist was crushing up a bag of Doritos every time. 

Where all of this leads to is a climax so abrupt, it almost feels like the movie ran out of money, rather than a satisfying conclusion.  The Possession of Hannah Grace is the kind of junk that's usually reserved for January, but I guess Screen Gems/Sony Entertainment just couldn't wait to disappoint us.  If there's any complement I can pay this movie, it's that the music score by John Frizzell is surprisingly sparse and atmospheric.  Too bad the movie didn't follow his lead.

0 comments