One person’s trash is another person’s demonic artifact.
This movie is your typical love story. Box meets girl. Box wants girl. Box possesses girl. Girl controls legions of moths to do her bidding. Then enters the dad, who doesn’t approve of their relationship. Did I mention there’s a rabbi? While The Possession may not be a real love story, it is still very formulaic in its approach.
When little girl Emily (Natasha Calis) comes across a strange wooden box with Hebrew symbols at a yard sale, its love at first sight. She takes the box back to her father Clyde’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) house, who she visits on the weekends. After some predictable disturbances (hearing voices, attacked by insects, eyes unnaturally rolling, etc), Emilly goes back home to her mother Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) where the effects manifest and take control. Clyde, identifying the box as the source of the problem, seeks helps from various professionals, but ultimately only Tzadok (Matisyahu), a rabbi, is his only hope.
The Possession plays out like any other possession film. The fact that it is based on Judaism instead of Catholicism makes little difference. Replace priests with rabbis, flies with moths, and Latin with Hebrew. The approach is less than novel, but that doesn’t matter because it succeeds where so many have failed. The film manages to carefully blend all the essential elements of a good, solid horror film together (engaging story, strong performances, and thoughtfully placed scares).
I already know I will be in the minority of people who enjoyed this film for what it was, but there will be another group of people who will dislike this film for what it wasn’t: A Sam Raimi horror film. The many wonders of advertising is that people who don’t have a more intimate knowledge of the film industry will be mislead in believing that this film was directed or written by Sam Raimi. It was neither. In fact Sam Raimi was only the producer, which more or less means he was in charge getting the film made (mostly financially), but had very little creative to no creative output. So if you were expecting his signature horror comedy style of film (i.e. The Evil Dead Trilogy and Drag Me To Hell), you will be more than a little disappointed.
In a time where horror is synonymous with gratuitous amounts of gore, where horror genre acting is tantamount to who can scream the loudest before being dismembered, where plots are replaced with over sexualized teens inexplicably mid coitus while they know there is a killer out, this film is a great nostalgic, traditional return to the horror films that originally sparked our love for the genre, especially after seeing the disaster of a film The Apparition. Screw all the remakes. Even though The Possession doesn’t really give us something new to fear, it reminds us why we’re scared to walk in the dark alone. To a lesser extent, it also serves as a warning of why you should beware of what you buy at yard sales.
