So I'm falling a little behind on my posts because of this and that, but they are about to show up rapid fire. I decided to break up the monotony of Paranormal Activity even if I am enjoying it with a completely different movie about creepy children and demons. The Possession.
The Possession is a fairly normal movie of its kind. A family is affected by a paranormal entity that decides to make their life miserable and weird. I can see how this got lost in the shuffle and I haven't seen it until recently. I mean, there was a huge boom in movies on this subject matter. So much it was a ridiculous. The Possession certainly stands above many of the ones that came out at the time though. One reason, it's based on a "true" story. The family buys a Dibbuk box at a yard sale (you can actually search for the real life story on google, it's kind of interesting), the box happens to have an evil spirit sealed inside of it that latches on to people who open it. The family is also affected by it's own strife, the parents are dealing with a divorce and the kids are caught in the middle of it. They just can't catch a damn break.
The Dibbuk box acts differently than most villains in a possession movie that try to stay hidden from people. This thing doesn't give a damn. In the first scene a woman tries to destroy it and the box kicks the shit out of her with unseen forces. Later in the movie it flat out kills a teacher for being around it. You wanna know why it does that? Because it knows it's a box and can get away with it. No one in their right mind is going to accuse the box, you can't arrest it. It can pretty much do whatever freaky shit it wants. The Dibbuk is a clever bastard. There are some fairly neat special effects scattered through the movie, though most of it is CGI, and pretty obvious at moments. But there are a few scenes that look really nice. It's a lot of good PG-13 horror stuff you're getting.
There's a pretty heavy metaphor for divorce and it's effects on families. One of the little girls throws around some lines like "I hate you.", "No wonder mom doesn't love you anymore." and things like that. Even lies about the dad hitting her. You even get a fake nice potential step dad thrown in there to get some great comeuppance. One of the more neat things in The Possession is that mythology and faith behind the Dibbuk is all Jewish in nature. So instead of a Catholic priest performing an exorcism, you get a Jewish Rabbi. As sad as it is to say, that's pretty progressive for movie studios to throw out there. It just adds a really cool level to the whole thing. An interesting tidbit from the set of the movie, the actual owner of the Dibbuk offered to bring it to the set of the film for Sam Raimi and the other crew to see and Raimi responded with what was essentially, "Fuck no! That thing is scary."
The Possession is solid but nothing truly spectacular. You probably wouldn't regret seeing it, but it's certainly not a classic you'll watch over and over again. So... ah fuck it, give it a shot at least once. I guess The Possession genre at the time didn't have a super high bar to hit. I'll be back later with some more reviews. Don't be afraid to be a little scary.
No comments:
Post a Comment