Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Writer: Brandon Cronenberg (Screenplay)
Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Abbott, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean
Plot: Possessor follows an agent who works for a secretive organization that uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies – ultimately driving them to commit assassinations for high-paying clients.
Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Possessor starts as we see how agent Tasya Vos (Riseborough) goes about her implanting into another person’s body to complete her assassination targets, getting away with the high-power assassinations without any suspect. Once out, Tasya must go through tests with Girder (Leigh) to make sure she can readjust to her own life before being allowed to return for the next assignment.
Tasya’s latest assignment is to go into the body of Colin Tate (Abbott) who is dating Ava Parse (Middleton), with the assignment to get close to her father John (Bean) to assassinate freeing up control of his technology business.
Thoughts on Possessor
Characters – Tasya Vos is the assassin that goes into the bodies of somebody who can get close to the target to complete her assignments, she is considered one of the best, but her work has started to see her struggle to handle the mix of her own reality and the lives she enters. Colin is the latest host that Tasya must take over, he is dating a rich technology company owner’s daughter and needs to eliminate that threat, while he is caught in the middle of the routine life Colin is working through. Girder is the contact outside for Tasya, the person that make sure Tasya is in her right mind before and after assignment.
Performances – Andrea Riseborough is great to watch in the role, showing the uncertainty going on in her character’s reality, Christopher Abbott shows us just how someone dealing with being in a new body is, showing how to adapt to a new life. The rest of the cast do a good job through the film too.
Story – The story here follows us into a world where people can get implanted into someone else head to complete an assassination only for the latest one taking an unexpecting twist. This does bring us a brilliant idea for a story, seeing how this idea could operate, it would have been nice to see a truly smooth version of the operation, as the first one we see, is the one that starts to see things unravelling. The slow spiral out of control does come off very well, making each scene feel like we don’t know what will happen next. We do have plenty of shock value going throughout the film.
Horror/Sci-Fi – The horror in the film comes shock body horror moments, seeing just how graphic everything goes, while the sci-fi side of the film comes from the idea of the assassination idea.
Settings – The film uses the settings to show use the different worlds that Tasya does through to complete her tasks.
Special Effects – The effects are used to give us extra shock value, never holding back on the gore we experience through the film.
Scene of the Movie – New mask.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – Not seeing a smooth operation.
Final Thoughts – Possessor is a horror film filled with shock, gore and an original idea that will make you want to see more.