Possessor

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.

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.

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."

The incipit is really good: an agency that perform contract killings, use a very innovative technology that implants a device on the brain of a designated target that allows to the killer to remotely wire. Therefore the person is replaced, his free will is canceled and the killer is then able to complete the assignment, without being directly involved. The concept is really good, but the movie has a lot of issues.

The movie has an ethereal kind of narration, which is a good choice, considering the main theme, but the pace is too slow. The director, which is also the main screenwriter, wanted to experiment, by creating strange effects and applying weird sound design and music, which I personally appreciated, but the story is not going on. There are a lot of stuff that are not explained: we never know what this agency is, why it exists, is it some kind of secret government project? Who are these agents? Why they are doing what they are doing? Do they receive a special training? Because none of this is clarified, I did not care about the context nor characters, I could not bound with them. The main character, Tasya Vos, played by Andrea Riseborough, has clearly some personal issue with the ex fiancée, or maybe husband, I don't get to know, but why her relationship is broken? What happened? Is it because of her job? You see how many questions I am writing in this review? There tons of plot holes.

After an interesting and involving intro, the screenplay starts to crumble. I have understood that the director wanted to keep a mistery-vibe, but you cannot keep your audience completely blind for the entire movie. There was a lot of potential, but it was wasted, because the director decided to play too much with visual effects, instead on focusing more on the story.

There aren't enough people doing this kind of stuff anymore, you know, the kind of movies David Cronenberg used to do, low budget but well crafted, high concept and not afraid to disturb, then lo and behold, looks like his son took the torch and I couldn't be happier. Possessor has some great performances and nice visual choices, the body horror bits do not disappoint as well and I thought the narrative was engaging from start to finish, found no issues with the pacing whatsoever.

We need more creative works like this on horror-fantasy.