Family Possessions

It's a b-movie style movie. It kinda reminded me of the Goosebumps tv show. I was a little disappointed that Felissa Rose wasn't in it more but I was surprised about how good the movie was.

Camera work is pretty good, the story makes sense, the movie makes the story make sense, it's nicely paced, no idea is shoved down your throat, and it plays on horror stereotypes very well; again not shoved down your throat.

The editing's pretty good too. It feels like a good student film (not to put it down)

But give it a try!!

The things that is initially apparent is how dismally bad the acting is, within seconds the inability of the lead actress to convey even the simplest emotion is on full display. Her expression of startled fear looks like a 3rd grader in a school play. The other characters are just slightly better than her, but the character of her mother delivers every line in a flat monotone voice that exhibits no emotion at all!

Then there is the script, which tells a very simple story, so simple that it comes across as pretty dumb. And the matter of fact type details just don't add up. The Dunn family moves into a community where they have not even visited in many years and yet all the family members seem to know where everything in town is located and EVERYTHING can be gotten to on foot! It is all centered in a North Carolina small city with a fair population and a considerable land area, but things are all a short distance away from each other and everyone seems to know everyone else.

The camera work in this film is very amateurish. One annoying practice of the past was to use camera angles and zoom focusing to relate surprise and/or shock value (right out of the 1970s Made for TV movies) and those techniques are riff in this film.

All these ingredients combined make for a poorly constructed film of a very simplistic storyline acted out by a horrible cast!

Nothing of any value to see here!

Why were there so many raw bell peppers on display at the dinner table?

I was lured in by a rather interesting movie cover, which turned out to oversell the movie by miles. The movie turned out to be nowhere near as interesting as the cover made it look like.

The storyline in the movie was adequate, albeit not interesting mind you. There were parts of the storyline and script that actually were quite adequate, but they were overshadowed by the mediocrity of the rest of the movie, which ranged from the special effects, the acting, the majority of the script and storyline and the entire premise of the movie.

The characters in the movie were fairly mundane and didn't really have much of depth or character development to them. In fact, some of them could actually have been replaced by cardboard cutouts.

There was nothing scary about "Family Possessions", unless you calculate the lack of a proper horror storyline into the equation. And almost nothing of any interest happened throughout the entire course of the movie. It was very monotone and slow paced.

As for the special effects, well let's just say you shouldn't get your hopes up. The was very little special effects in the movie. And the few times that you did see the dead and rotting lady, it was just laughable to look at. But the scene where you see a girl with her jaw mangled and tongue cut out that just tops it in terms of being fake to look at.

"Family Possessions" had me asleep twice throughout the course. But I woke up both times and continued to watch the movie, in the fading hope that the movie would pick up itself and become better. It didn't...

I think it had an 80s TV movie or "Tales from the Darkside" vibe. The look, the acting, the effects. It wasn't great but it held my interest.

Slow burn and would have benefited from some editing.