Wednesday 20 August 2014

Review: The Possession (2012)

The Possession
IMDB rate: 5,9
Genre: Possession

When I first saw this title on Netflix I expected it to be a bad movie. The last couple of years there are tons of bad possession movies (Devils Due, The Last Exorcism, The Devil Inside) and well, why would this one be any different? I did gave it a chance though, I can't judge a movie by it's cover of course. I must say that I didn't hate this movie, it would never become my favorite movie of all time, but it really wasn't bad. 

The basketball coach Clyde and his wife Stephanie divorced a couple of months ago and their teenage daughter Hannah and the girl Emily live with their mother and spend the weekends with their father. One day, Clyde stops his car in a yard sale and Emily buys an antique carved box and becomes obsessed with it. Emily finds the hidden lock and releases an evil spirit that possesses her. Soon Clyde discovers that Emily has a problem, but his annoying ex-wife and her boyfriend Brett do not pay attention to him and get a restraining order against Clyde. Clyde seeks out Professor McMannis and when he sees the box, he explains that it is a Dibbuk Box, where a spirit is trapped inside. He also explains that the box shouldn't be open; otherwise the person will be possessed by the spirit. 


The title of this movie isn't very original, it will absolutely not be a surprise what this movie will be about. I'm not a big fan of these 'literal' titles, I think they will scare people away very easily since you immediately know what it's about. The link is easily made to crap movie like The Devil Inside and The Last Exorcism. 

Something I noticed about this movie was that they only put attention to important things. There are always a few useless dialogues, they are necessary for every movie, but in this movie they almost mute these conversations. In fact, I only noticed these conversations because I had subtitles turned on. The focus is really on what's important and what isn't. 

The acting is quite good. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a good actor and he played his part as a worried father pretty good. I wasn't a big fan of Kyra Sedgwick, her acting wasn't very realistic, a bit over-the-top. Also, her character was a huge bitch which didn't improve me liking her. Thumbs up for Natasha Calis, who plays the girl Emily, she acted really good. She's cute at moments, but scary as hell when she needs to be. When she kept repeating "daddy, you scare me", it gave me shivers all over. 

The movie is actually quite tensive throughout. There were a few jump scares and the tension is very high in many scenes. The movie is filmed quite dark, which also helps improving the tension. There are quite a few interesting scenes, for example the one with the moth invasion. It's pretty scary. The creature at the end was a bit fake looking though. 


A few things what I didn't like was that people always seem to forget that they have something that's called light. People in horror movies never turn their goddamn lamps on and rather face the thing making noise in the darkness. Annoying as fuck. Also, the thing you saw moving in the MRI looked scary as fuck, but is also unrealistic as hell. And how the fuck do the doctors not see this thing? 

I thought The Possession was a reasonable movie, it's quite realistic and the girl playing Emily plays amazingly. I definitely expected it to be a terrible movie, but it's really an okay movie. Nothing special, but nothing bad either. I definitely had fun watching it. 

My personal rate: 6,5/10

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