by Sarabeth Pollock:
Trust Lionsgate Films to scare the crap out of us over Labor Day weekend. Horror fans and anyone looking for a nice little adrenaline rush won’t be disappointed with The Possession, the true story of a young girl who becomes a timeshare for a malevolent spirit.
Divorced parents Clyde and Stephanie Brenek (Morgan and Sedgwick) know that their two daughters, Hannah and Em (Davenport and Calis) are having trouble dealing with their recently finalized divorce. Though they have been separated for over a year, the girls are adjusting to life alternating between two houses. Workaholic high school basketball coach Clyde is trying to win favors with his girls by feeding them foods from Stephanie’s banned foods list (pizza) as they grow accustomed to his new house, built in a still-under-construction neighborhood that older sister Hannah points out is in the middle of nowhere.
Clyde needs to take a work phone call over the weekend, so in the meantime he allows the girls to wander through a garage sale, giving them free reign to get whatever they want. Young Em falls in love with a mysterious wooden box etched with intricate writing. What the Brenek family doesn’t realize is that the garage sale is being held to raise money for the owner of the house, who was badly injured by the creature that lives within the box. Upon closer inspection, the box wasn’t made to be opened, rather it was made specifically to keep whatever is on the inside…inside. Em figures out how to open the box, and that’s when the trouble begins. The box itself is the vessel that contains a dibbuk (or dybbuk), which is Hebrew for an evil spirit that takes possession of a living person. It doesn’t take long for Em’s father to see that her behavior has nothing to do with the divorce. She lashes out at people around her, and then she becomes confused by her own behavior. Bugs plague the family home. At one point, a shocked and terrified Em asks “who am I?” Natasha Calis deserves an award for her performance. She is capable of such a wide range of emotions for someone her age that without her, I’m not sure this film could be successful.
The Possession runs for 90 minutes but it seems like it could have been longer. There were a few plot holes that I wished had been resolved, but they didn’t detract from the story. So much happened in such a relatively short period of time; indeed, the story it is based on took place over 29 days. The movie starts out slow and then the action builds quickly, finishing with the kind of mind-blowing ending we have come to expect from Sam Raimi. Keep in mind that this movie is based on a true story, and while there are some truly frightening elements to it (I certainly found it to be scary as hell), it isn’t exactly a horror movie. That statement might seem contradictory to some people, but what I’m trying to convey is that you can’t compare this movie to a torture-porn film like Saw or a slasher movie like Friday the 13th. The Possession is in a horror sub-genre that is scary but oddly realistic, because, well, it really happened. It’s the perfect movie to see on a long Labor Day weekend…and let it serve as a reminder that if you visit a garage sale in the future, you should stay away from boxes that don’t open…
The Possession is now in theaters. Click here for showtimes near you.
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