However, what's more saturated than the horror genre? Try the sub-genre of demonic possession. It was done brilliantly with The Exorcist in 1973 and has had many imitators since. By the time that The Possession has come along, it's a hard task to try and do anything differently.
The film follows a family who has recently separated. The two young girls, Em (Natasha Calis) and Hannah (Madison Davenport) live with their Mother, Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) and new boyfriend, Brett (Grant Show). However, on weekends their Father, Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has custody and takes them to his new house that he has recently bought. When Clyde has the girls one weekend, they stop off at a 'yard sale', because Hannah mentions that he needs some new plates (second hand ones apparently?!), but Em finds an unusual box and becomes strongly attached to it. When Em finally opens the box, she starts acting strangely; she finds fingers in he back of her throat, is attacked by a plague of moths, starts hearing voices in her head and then starts taking on a second, more demonic, personality. Her Father, Clyde soon believes that she is possessed and sets about to enlist the help of a young Jewish man, Tzadok (Matisyahu) and team up with his ex-wife to try and banish the evil spirit for good and trap it back into the box.
If The Possession set out to try and prove that it was different to all the rest and more original, then unfortunately it failed. There is nothing here that we haven't seen before. We even get a scene of a young, pre-pubescent girl in her nightdress being attacked by a demonic force (as featured in the poster) which gives very strong throwbacks to The Exorcist, or many of the recent imitators such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The one shred of originality in The Possession is the fact that it bases the demonic legend within the Jewish faith, rather than traditionally with the Christian faith. However, it's short lived as most of the possession scenes involving Em and the final exorcism scenes at the end of the film run out exactly like that of previous films involving Christian demonic possessions.
Having said that, although The Possession is not at all original, it does still have a lot going for it. For starters, the casting and the acting within the film overall was very strong. The stand-out performance from relative newcomer Natasha Calis as Em was definitely a highlight; she switched between the innocent and helpless young girl to evil demon quite effortlessly. Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a fairly decent job of supporting Calis as the troubled Father, although he does seem to start believing that she is possessed by a demon fairly easily, but I'll blame that on the scriptwriting. The only casting I can really criticise is Kyra Sedgwick as the Mother. At times, her wide-eyed, deadpan quips back to the girls' Father became a little irritating and unfortunately she doesn't have a lot to do in the finale of the film when they are trying to exorcise their daughter of the demon (however, that last one can be blamed to the writing of the film again.)
One of the most interesting aspects of the film is how it tries to blend together the drama of a family going through a divorce mixed with the horror of a demonic possession. It could have really used this to it's advantage to add some extra conflict to the film, alongside the demon itself. While there is a hint of it in a scene where a possessed Em acts as if her Father is slapping her in front of her sister, Hannah (when really, he isn't) which results in the Father having his visitation rights removed, it felt like the film could have pushed this further to really show the strain between this already broken family. Instead, despite this one scene which mixes the horror and the drama very well, the film feels blocky in a sense that is spends about 10 minutes purely focused on the family troubles before shoving in a horror scene. It repeats this sequence up until the finale, which is probably the most tense part of the film, which is purely devoted to the generic exorcism scene. What would have been truly interesting is if someone had walked in on the exorcism and suspected the whole family of child abuse against the young Em, so the film could have again mixed the drama and horror elements together, rather than keeping them separate.
So, while The Possession is not exactly the most original film, there's no denying that it is competantly made. Director, Ole Bornedal has obviously worked closely with Cinematographer, Dan Laustsen to create a film that is quite beautiful to look at. While at times the musical score by Anton Sanko can be a little overdramatic, it does it's job in trying to create a sense of dread and suspense.
I've heard that the film was butchered in the editing room by the studio in order to lower the rating in America to a more "family friendly" PG-13 rating, so it will be interesting to see if we get an "Unrated" version anytime into the future.
*** / *****
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