Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Brandon Cronenberg
Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence
Middleton, Sean Bean, Jennifer Jason Leigh
You know how witnesses often describe the perpetrators of homicidal
acts as behaving as though they were possessed? Well what if some
killers really were possessed? Not by any sort of supernatural entity,
but by another flesh and blood human tapping into their consciousness
like a hacker remotely assuming control of your webcam? That's the
central premise of director Brandon Cronenberg's second feature,
Possessor.
Cronenberg's film is something of a sci-fi twist on Alan J Pakula's
classic conspiracy thriller The Parallax View, in which unwitting dupes are brainwashed into committing
assassinations by a shady organisation. Here, the villains have moved
far beyond simple mind control and onto something far more advanced -
now they have the ability to control a stranger's entire brain and body.
This is done remotely, with a special agent hooked up to a series of
electronic doohickeys while they control their temporary host from
afar.
One such agent is Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough). Like a James
Bond movie, Possessor opens with the climax of Vos's
latest assignment, where she's taken over the body of a young woman
working as a hostess at a corporate function. Controlled by Vos, the
woman brutally murders a businessman before attempting to take her own
life. For some reason, Vos can't get her host to pull the trigger (it's
essential that the hosts die so as not to cause any suspicion), but as
the young woman is black, the cops who arrive on the scene immediately
finish Vos's job for her.
Vos's subsequent mission is more complicated. She must take over the
body of Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), a slacker currently
dating Ava Parse (Tuppence Middleton, who between this and
Disappearance at Clifton Hill
has now worked with both generations of Cronenbergs), the daughter of
wealthy tycoon John Parse (Sean Bean). Under the guise of Tate,
the plan is for Vos to kill John while making it look like the result of
the well known animosity between the two men.
As with his feature debut, Antiviral, Cronenberg's second film shows that the apple didn't fall too far
from the Cronenberg family tree. Body-horror is prevalent here, as
Cronenberg Jr inherits his father's fascination with the human body and
its brittleness. In the US the film has been released under the title
'Possessor Uncut', a marketing ploy designed to emphasise its graphic
nature, and this is indeed one of the most explicit films to come out of
mainstream North American cinema in quite some time. Along with the over
the top gore there's a surprising amount of nudity, both male and
female, even offering that most taboo image - the erect penis - at one
point (and when Vos first takes command of Tate's body her first
instinct is to check out what he's packing!).
Possessor has more to offer than blood, boobs and
bollocks however. Cronenberg has fashioned an atmospheric throwback to
the conspiracy thrillers of the '70s while preying on very modern fears
regarding the surveillance states we now find ourselves living within.
Tate's minimum wage job sees him required to spy on hacked webcams and
report on the type of furniture he sees in his unwitting victims' homes,
information presumably then sold to advertising firms. We're currently
living in the future Minority Report predicted - where our
buying habits are mined, bought and sold - and
Possessor suggests things are set to get even more
intrusive.
While there's a lot going on subtextually here,
Possessor never quite offers us an engaging enough plot to
make it really stand out. It's essentially a cyberpunk twist on the old
trope of the assassin becoming disillusioned with their career, as Vos
begins to have doubts while inhabiting Tate. Riseborough and Abbott are
both excellent, but the script doesn't give them quite enough to chew
on, and when the former's Vos finds herself doubting her actions,
Cronenberg can't find any way to visualise it beyond some clichéd
blurring effects, save for a late dream sequence involving the creepiest
mask since Tommy lee Wallace spray-painted a William Shatner mask to
create Michael Myers.
While it exploits very modern fears, ultimately
Possessor functions best as a love letter to paranoid
cinema of the past. It has a moody, somnambulistic feel that makes it
ideal for a late night viewing, and while watching I was brought back to
the Sunday nights of my teen years when I would stay up late to watch
BBC's Alex Cox hosted 'Moviedrome', which introduced me to many a '70s
conspiracy thriller, along with a few movies by Brandon's old man.
Possessor is on Shudder UK/ROI now.