Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

  • Home
  • The Blog
  • Email List/Contact
  • Interviews
  • Apocalyptic
  • Horror
  • Military Thriller
  • Sci-fi/Fantasy
  • All books

POSSESSOR (2020)

February 1, 2021 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Brandon Cronenberg’s POSSESSOR (2020, Google Play) excels at visual style, a powerful and immersive atmosphere, and an amazing cast including Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Nonetheless, in my opinion it fails to live up to its intriguing premise.

The story stems from a corporation that hires out assassins to high-paying clients. Tasya is one of them, and she remotely inhabits other people’s consciousness to commit the assassinations. She’s given a big job to inhabit a man and kill a CEO before turning the gun on himself. But things go wrong.

It’s a premise with enormous possibilities. Remote assassination, a woman in a man’s body, hiding not just in plain sight but right in front of somebody you are going to kill–there’s a lot of intriguing stuff here, though much of it is goes unexplored. Where POSSESSOR shines is in its atmosphere and world building. It’s a nicely imagined alternate world, the visual style is artistic, and the atmosphere is moody and immersive.

Where it lost me was the characters. Maybe it was just me, but it felt like the film didn’t mind creating an emotional distance between me and the major characters, and as a result I didn’t care about Tasya, and I didn’t care about the man she inhabited. Without more than a marginal character arc or even basic investment, I looked to the plot to move things along, but the pacing is very slow, and plot wraps up while leaving a lot of potential story on the table. The film is spiced with ample, graphic body horror and gore, so over the top I found it discordant and indulgent.

So in the end I kind of liked POSSESSOR for its strengths, but I didn’t connect with it in any meaningful way aside from its artistic direction, solid acting, and for what I wished it had been. It’s getting rave reviews, so maybe it’s just me, but this one was a beautiful swing but a miss for me.

Filed Under: Movies, Movies & TV, The Blog

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Categories

  • APOCALYPTIC/HORROR
    • Apocalyptic
    • Art
    • Film Shorts/TV
    • Movies
    • Music Videos
    • Reviews of Other Books
    • Weird/Funny
    • Zombies
  • COMICS
    • Comic Books
  • CRAIG'S WORK
    • Armor Series
    • Aviator Series
    • Crash Dive Series
    • Episode Thirteen
    • One of Us
    • Our War
    • Strike
    • Suffer the Children
    • The Alchemists
    • The Children of Red Peak
    • The End of the Road
    • The Final Cut
    • The Front
    • The Infection
    • The Killing Floor
    • The Retreat Series
    • The Thin White Line
    • Tooth and Nail
  • GAMES
    • Video & Board Games
  • HISTORY
    • Other History
    • Submarines & WW2
  • MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE
    • Books
    • Film Shorts
    • Interesting Art
    • Movies & TV
    • Music
  • POLITICAL
    • Politics
  • SCIENCE
    • Cool Science
  • The Blog
  • WRITING LIFE
    • Craig at Work
    • Interviews with Craig
    • Reader Mail
    • Writing/Publishing

Copyright © 2023 · Author Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in