Possessor

Immensely disturbing, shocking and provocative; "Possessor" takes you on a wild ride while playing with your mind.

In this science-fiction horror film, an agent working for a secretive organization uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people's bodies, driving them to commit assassinations for high-paying clients.

It goes without saying that Cronenberg is heavily influenced by the earlier films his father made but I also couldn't help but think of John Frankenheimer's "Seconds"while watching this. You can see where Cronenberg wants to play with sci-fi, horror and even reality. It's a daring vision and one you won't soon forget (if you have the stomach for it). Christopher Abbott is haunting in the lead role and Andrea Riseborough delivers a solidly chilling performance. It's a scary-ass film and I'm telling you there are visuals in "Possessor" that will haunt you for days, but I recommend you see it.

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I think this is one of those films you will love or hate.

It is quite slow moving and you do have to pay attention to get the most from it. Personally, I enjoyed it, and it makes a change from the usual sci-fi 'factory' movies churned out by Hollywood.

The acting, writing, and production are superb.

The son of David Cronenberg wants to to a movie like Existenz, but he ultimately fails to do so. The acting is good, but the plot is really drawn out and says almost nothing in the end. Also, as many others noted, there is some gratuitous gore and violence put in which doesn't really advance the story in any way, and that extends to some other things as well.

The entire thing revolves around people that "jockey" other people in order to do very mundane things like assassinations. The very idea is lacking imagination, considering that the premise of this film is killing people for other people that want their money and the very obvious alternative is to jockey the people directly and take their money. And then there is an entire exploration of what it means to inhabit other people's lives and minds, but it goes nowhere other than hallucinating some images.

At least the end was good because the jockey finally got back on track and remembered her work ethic! I am kidding. The end was bad.

Bottom line: an overly long film that shouts "Cronenberg!!!!" but needed very little of the signature characteristics of a Cronenberg movie to tell this story. I hope Brandon will find his own voice rather than bank on the same ideas his father explored. Or was it really Brandon? Maybe his father was jockeying him!

Some artful notions swirling around in this one, "Possessor," but not necessarily always amounting to much. A conclusion of a loss of empathy seems especially trite to me. There's so much more potential here than some character arch. More than the satire on the real world, too.

We've got mind-body duality of implanted techno body horror (from the son of the master of the subgenre) instead of dreamscape "Inception" (2010), but nonetheless for some generic corporatist plot. There's a bit of "The Puppet Masters" or "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to the scenario, as well. An actress (Andrea Riseborough) playing a character that also is an actress--practicing her lines, fine-tuning facial expressions until literally embodying her character. It's even in her name, Tasya Vos, meaning "resurrection" and "fox," a symbolically trickster animal. A character who wears other people's faces like a mask and whose nightmare is that one of those people wears her face literally as a mask. Body and mental dysmorphia that becomes bizarre digitally dysmorphic cinematic imagery. Seeing artifacts that aren't there. An identity crisis fully emerging from wearing virtual-reality-like goggles to spy through customers' webcams through the eyes of the body that's consciousness has been hacked via Vos hooked up to another virtual-reality set. It's the sort of film-within-a-film that's within yet another film that really makes a character question their reality.

This is what got me wondering, then, about those objects Vos looks at in her debriefing meetings with Jennifer Jason Leigh's Girder (which may mean "satirist," by the way). Interesting how Leigh has been cast in so many such detached, clinician-type parts, at least of late: "Annihilation" (2018) and "Awake" (2021) being two of the latest movies I've seen with her, in addition to "The Woman in the Window" allusion to her part in "Single White Female" (1992). This is also the actress from "eXistenZ" (1999), "The Machinist" (2004) and "Synecdoche, New York" (2008). There probably aren't many actors out there more trained in the ways of reality-bending cinematic reflexivity. More interesting methinks than her ex-husband's use of meta-narratives as realistic movie therapy sessions.

Cronenberg to Cronenberg, but for the actors, Leigh's satirist grooms another actress as her successor. She monitors her character possessing via virtual-reality headwear, illustrates her slasher exploits with bloody big-screen images, and presents her objects from her past--nominally to distinguish her own identity and reality from those she possesses--but, Girder actually advises Vos to detach herself further, from the family connections that distract her from her work. Noah Baumbach should take note.

All of which makes me wonder about those objects, a pipe and a pinned butterfly. The latter seems to fit the transformation and resurrection themes well enough, but that pipe. And, boy, is there a lot of vaping in this one. A tobacco fix that isn't tobacco. A pipe that isn't actually a pipe. People possessed who aren't actually themselves. Consumers and voyeurs, not people. Pornography instead of sex. Dead images in lieu of reality. Ceci n'est pas une pipe à la René Magritte. This is The Treachery of Images. This isn't reality; it's a representation, surreal, virtual, a movie. "Pull me out."

Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is the Possessor. She's a corporate assassin who uses a brain implant to take over other people to do the killing. Her boss is Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Her next take-over target is Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott) who is dating Ava Parse (Tuppence Middleton), the daughter of tech tycoon John Parse (Sean Bean).

This is a Brandon Cronenberg film. It has his father penchant for blood. It's a fine sci-fi flick with a dash of style. The filming does need something more. I can't quite put my finger on it. It has style but it needs more. It has moments of intensity but it needs more. It has ideas about control and self-identity. I'm not completely bought into the character Tasya. I don't know who she is and quite frankly, she may not know herself. That would have been an interesting idea if it's clearer about being murky. All in all, this is more interesting than not. There are enough in here worthy of the Cronenberg name.