Possessor

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.

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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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.

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 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!