Sombras de um Desejo

I may review this report after watching the film a second time. this time around, I was most disappointed, expecting from the DVD sleeve promotion and the very title of the film, a demonic horror thriller. No such thing.

Another love triangle involving a young woman and two brothers, this is a soppy sentimental love story but I can see where people are coming from in thinking the husband Ryan has possessed the soul of his brother as a result of the accident. they could have fed off the recent film 'Brothers' which had a war topic to the story and although not great, delivered the goods. this film doesn't.

There is no real drama or horror in this movie and the ending is macabre to say the least. The acting is below standard even from the leading lady and the script is poor, the story told with so slow a pace it was excruciating.

Checking IMDb, there are quite a few films by the same title and it was difficult at first to identify the correct film on which to post the review.

There have been some very sensible and to the point comments by previous commentators about this movie. it remains to be seen whether I revise this review after a second viewing.

American remakes of South Asian films have often produced disastrous results. 'Possession' faces a similar fate. It's not as bad as most remakes of South Asian movies but as a stand alone it's not very good either. The execution is passable. There are some eye-candy photographic visuals but the background score is annoying. The forced 'jump' moments are unnecessary and out of place.

The movie hardly works as a thriller but to an extent it does work as a human drama. Jess's hope of her husband's recovery conflicted with her confusion in seeing her brother-in-law act familiar is well displayed. Sarah Michelle Gellar is brilliantly restrained. How I hope she would move out of the horror thriller genre and attempt different kinds of roles. Lee Pace's performance suffers due to poor characterization.

'Possession' is easily forgettable. Other than Michelle Gellar's performance, there isn't much to look forward to.

This movie was very uneven I think I would have to see the Japanese version or read the book in order to appreciate it better or at least understand what happened at the end of it. Too much of vital details was left on the cutting room floor apparently or maybe the director expects too much of his audience. Wanting an intelligent audience is one thing but leaving so much details out to the point whereby the audience is practically left to make up their own movie is just ridiculous. It has shades of Bollywood's 'Anamika' in it. The idea behind the film was brilliant but it was executed poorly. I like Sarah Michelle Gellar but this was not one of her best work.

Based on the trailer and the tags for the movie I expected a little bit of a horror/thriller from the movie, instead I got a slow moving tense love story. The movie lacked a wow factor, while being watchable and being a remake I would have wanted more out of the second release. Acting in it was good, nothing outstanding as it only was composed of three actors for the majority and of those two that showed any depth.Regardless of what I expected though, the movie was very slow in a lot of areas and then the theatrical version (and from what I read the alternate version is much better) provides an ending that was jumbled and developed poorly for the viewer. They seemed to just toss out this ending without thought to turn it into a somewhat creepy idea of "possession" that I found to be quite bland.

Overall if you watch a lot of movies and need something to watch, check it out, its not horrendous. Otherwise, there are plenty of other flicks worth pouring an hour half into.

Jess (Sarah Michelle Gellar) finds her perfect married life turned upside-down when both her husband Ryan (Michael Landes) and his bad-boy brother Roman (Lee Pace) are sent into comas following a head-on car collision. Roman eventually wakes from his coma, but seems convinced that he is Ryan. Will Jess believe that her husband's spirit has somehow passed into the body of his brother, or will she call bulls**t?

It doesn't surprise me at all to find that Possession is a remake of an Asian film: it stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, it moves like molasses, and the messy plot sure takes some swallowing. The title promises supernatural shenanigans, and for most of the film, that is precisely what we are led to believe we are watching; but as the film progresses (very, very slowly) to the less than scintillating finale, it becomes apparent that there is nothing supernatural about the story whatsoever. Personally, I felt more than a tad cheated: I watched the film with the expectation of a spooky chiller, but what I got was a psychological thriller-cum-romance instead. And a pretty poor one at that!

Edit *** I've just watched Addicted, the Korean film on which this was based; it is also a very slow-moving film, but a much more worthwhile effort overall—classy and subtle, where Possession is just clumsy ***