Starring: Christopher Abbott, Andrea Riseborough, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean
Distributor: Monster Pictures
Runtime: 103 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2020
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How can personality be manipulated in the future? That is one of the key features in this bizarre exercise in science-fiction and horror. And how can this manipulation be used criminally and destructively?
There is an alert in noticing that the director-writer is Brandon Cronenberg. He is the son of Canadian director, David Cronenberg, who emerged during the 1980s with similar themes before branching out to a successful and varied directing career. Brandon, with Possessor, is definitely in the line of his father.
The audience has to pay quite some attention to what is going on, the danger of being lost, in trying to work out how the controlling mechanism, the Possessor, actually works with the insertion of the consciousness and control of a special agent, lying in the machine, into another person and the transformation of the host of this new consciousness moved to murder.
So, almost immediately, we are shown a woman’s head being drilled for the insertion, her going to a social event, suddenly attacking one of the key guests, a vicious and bloody killing. She attempts to put a gun in her own mouth but cannot do it and is killed by the police.
Transition back to the staff, especially the control, Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh). She debriefs the agent, Tasya (Andrea Riseborough in another offbeat performance), looking pale and gaunt. There are some moments of peace went Tasya goes home to visit her former husband Michael, Rossif Sutherland) and her young son, Ira. But, she feels a compulsion to go back to work in the Possessor.
Most of the film is actually about the second murder and the host. His story and motivation are quickly established (but one has to pay a lot of attention). He is Colin Tate (a strong performance from Christopher Abbott), two-timing with his fiancee, Ava (Tuppence Middleton), hostile to her father, a business magnate, who humiliates him (Sean Bean). Once again, there is a vicious killing but things seem to be going somewhat haywire. Which raises the dramatic issue in question of who is in control, Tasya aware that something going awry with the insertion and manipulation, or is it Colin who is disturbed by the violence of what has happened and its consequences for him?
The drama becomes more eerie, assisted by a special effect blurring sequences, indicating what is happening to Tasya inside Colin’s brain. Which leads to more violence, attempts by an agent to rectify the brain situation, and the question of who is trying to destroy whom.
Not a drama for popular taste. Rather, for those who are interested in some of the weirder aspects of human behaviour, scientific control of the brain and consequent violence.
Peter Malone MSC
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