Hearing Brandon Cronenberg and various crew members discuss the production process of Possessor across the numerous features on this release, it is a miracle that the film got made and that the final result is so memorably weird and unique. Its release in 2020 during the height of Covid lockdowns was oddly appropriate with its characters losing grip on reality and having their beliefs about what is “normal” being questioned.
The other side of that, though, is that while it was well received, particularly within the horror community, it may have slipped under the radar, swamped by all media effectively being released straight to home viewing. Enter Second Sight, who do their usual magic of bolstering underseen films with the high quality release they deserve. As well as supplementary features on behind the scenes, there is a video essay by Zoe Rose Smith that explores how the film depicts depersonalisation and disassociation with the limited edition including a booklet with more critical deep dives on the film.
Evidently then, Possessor is a film that has plenty to chew on, on an intellectual and visceral level. At its simplest, it is high concept horror about Tasya Vos, who works as an assassin that is able to possess other people to kill her targets through invasive technology. When she possesses Colin, a straightforward operation goes wrong as Colin starts to resist her control. In contrast to the sleek machinery, the kills are brutal, messy and unpleasant. Cronenberg evokes thrills and repulsion at the same time with a matter-of-factness that really leaves an impact.
As it approaches its fifth anniversary, Possessor having this much extra material around it demonstrates how much work has gone into each single shot and, in my eyes, cements it as a modern horror classic.
At the same time as this bloody action, there is psychological and existential horror expressed through similarly striking visuals. The film was inspired by Cronenberg’s feeling that he was constructing a personality while onpress tour for his debut, Antiviral, and in primarily using practical effects, that feeling of disassembling and reassembling yourself is made tactile. Melting bodies, faces being worn as masks, bleeding pores – as well as being visceral, they convey how our fragile bodies are containers for our equally fragile sense of self.
It’s an incredible achievement to evoke such an abstract and complex feeling so clearly and an early attempt at these techniques can be seen in the short film included with this release, ‘Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You.’ Its connection to Possessor is clear, even down to a production level as it was created out of frustration with struggling to get funding for Possessor. It’s an effective short in its own right, but after watching Possessor, it does feel like a ten minute version of the most surreal sequences in Possessor.
As I said, there is plenty to dive into with the film’s themes, but what jumped out on this viewing was how the film is full of parallels. This is most obvious in the character’s identities overlapping with each other, but the merging of their identities is just a manifestation of a pre-existing connection. Vos and Colin are both workers in an uncaring business, unhappy with their respective partners, feeling like pawns used to fulfil a function within a pre-constructed narrative. Such echoing even occurs outside themselves, such as Vos’s son being given a toy that he can make dance by inputting instructions into his computer, a child-friendly version of the work his mother does.
All of this adds to the uncanniness of the film, but it is clear that Possessor‘s unique tone is a result of collaboration rather than a single-minded product of auteurism. The supplements highlight this through anecdotes like Andrea Riseborough suggesting that Vos would dress like her targets to the disgusting beauty of Dan Martin’s effects, which get their own “show and tell” feature on this release. As it approaches its fifth anniversary, Possessor having this much extra material around it demonstrates how much work has gone into each single shot and, in my eyes, cements it as a modern horror classic.
Possessor is out now on Second Sight Blu-Ray
