Writer's Block Review: "The Possession" (2012)

To help me break with some writer’s block I have been suffering from since the large amount of writing I did for my finals in the middle of May, I am going back to basics.  You might be saying, “you haven’t updated this blog in months.”  To which I must replay, “yeah, I had other shit going on.” 

A large amount of this blog is just me writing about movies I have seen.  For a time I would rank/review all the movies I had seen from a given year.  I stopped emphasizing movies for whatever reason and now my brain is tired from thinking bigger thoughts about the world and suffering and how people in power know exactly how to fix it all, but they don’t.

Today I am going to write on here something simple, much like how I started simple when I went back to the gym following Covid.

 The Possession (2012)

Written by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White

Directed by Ole Bornedal

Currently available on Netflix.

The Premise

After a cold opening that makes no sense based on the mythology explored later in the movie and which completely gives the game away on their being some kind of telekinetic ghost/spirit/demon being in a box… we get a movie about a troubled family that buys said haunted box from a yard sale.

This movie is “based on actual events” in that there is a supposedly haunted box owned by notorious ghost hunter and notable fraud Zak Baggins… maybe that is too harsh… let’s change it to alleged fraud.  The actual object It is one of those things that is obviously bullshit but it is fun to pretend, we all need a little magic in our lives.

The Good

The child actors in this work.  Kids often have a hard time putting forth a believable performance, but these kids hit the mark.  I have no complaints about their performances or their roles in the story.

Jeffery Dean Morgan is fantastic in this.  He is so much better than the material that I am vexed as to why he is even in this movie.  Just a paycheck?  Was he taken in by the “based on actual events” tagline?  Apparently, in an interview he shared some of the weird events that happened on set, maybe he is into ghosts?

The use of moths as the signature animal associated with the demon/ghost is different, and I appreciate different.  There are images of the monster as seen in an MRI image that is legitimately creepy to point where I feel a better movie would have used such a scene to elevate itself to “great”.

The Bad

The previously mentioned opening is crap.  I cannot stress enough that having a ghost/demon that can kill and maim people while still in its prison undermines the entire point of the story.  When the box does the same sort of violence later in the movie (I have to imagine a producer said, “you need and action beat”) it again pushes the story away from spooky to goofy.

This is not hard to fix.  In the opening have someone OPEN THE BOX, and then refusing the demon/ghost’s attempt to possess them (let us say the person is an adult and knows not to let themselves be possessed) then the demon uses some kind of power to hurt them.  At the midpoint have the person killed by the demon be killed… BY CHILD WHO IS POSSESSED.  That ups the stakes.  That the monster is able to use their power because they are now free and anchored into a willing host.

Having a third-party victim killed by the possessed person will make the audience worry more for the family members, setting up an internal tension for the little girl who is trying not to hurt her family, but… you know… possessed.  You could even have a scene like the one at the end of “The Exorcist III” where the possessed person fights thru and helps to defeat the demon.

Another big failure of this movie is how they show you the contents of the box almost immediately and there is very little mystery to the box itself.  Weak.

Let’s also talk about the monster, I am always a little iffy when it comes to appropriating other cultures to pepper your ghost movie with some exoticism.  In this case the demon is a creature of Jewish folklore that speaks in Yiddish and is defeated by the drafting of a hip young rabbi who is willing to go outside the rules to help battle the demon.  That is a weird choice.  You don’t often see in the movie, “I must consult with a mystic to battle this evil, gonna have to catch the train to the Bronx.”

So, here is an obvious idea to help reform the plot, why not make the family Jewish?  Shocking to realize that the family is not Jewish (at least not ostensibly) considering the subject matter.  But religion is a thing that can bring people together or be a wedge in a relationship.  You could have the mom be Jewish and she is trying to reconnect to her roots (maybe in response to a family tragedy, maybe there used to be three kids, hell the ghost could pretend to be the third kids ghost making it easier for it to possess the younger sister who is not haling the death of the sibling well). 

This commitment to her religion in the wake of a family tragedy could be why the mom and dad broke up.  The idea that he no longer fit with her increasingly conservative outlook fits better than the “we broke up… for… reasons…” material that is there.  As is, the mother being just pointlessly hostile, petty, and too quick to believe bad things about her ex-husband makes her real hard to root for.

Then you have another interesting way to take things.  That the dad has to embrace Jewish mysticism to defeat the demon/ghost, but the mother thinks he is mocking her or trying to get back with her via some kind of manipulation of her beliefs.  That is real drama.  Then, just like the ending to “Signs” you can have the family come together at the end having had their faith confirmed and tried by horrific circumstances.

Remember "Signs"?
Remember liking Mel Gibson?
Is it disrespectful to bring up Gibson when talking about a movie that centers on Jewish mythology?

Really the ending is weird.  I was expecting a super dark ending, in which the demon jumps to possessing the other daughter; then kills the mom, younger sister, and rabbi; and then frames the dad for it all.  Super downer endings were the family gets murdered by the demon have been shown to work, look at “Sinister”.  As is, the ending peters out on a vaguely happy ending… BUT OH NO THE DEMON BOX ESCAPED.  Weird and not as fulfilling or scary as it should be, just stuck in the middle.

To come back again to the Jewish mysticism angle, this is not the only Jewish exorcism movie I have seen.  “The Unborn” also did this and these movies are a study in contrasts.  I find “Unborn” has the better thrust, because the ghost in that story is an unborn twin, and they manage to weave that idea into the Nazi twin experiments.  Using material from the Holocaust is a lot of borrowed pathos to bring into the movie, which is crass… but it is also SOMETHING.  Maybe I should have made this a double feature to compare and contrast the two?  Jazz up this review.  Oh well.

It is cr-ASS on the movie poster for sure.
Holy moly is it tasteless to have this be such a selling point
for a movie about the specter of the Holocaust.

Conclusion

“The Possession” is a hacky bit of forgettable flotsam in the ocean of content that the world has to offer.  It is not bad; it is just typical.  The best scenes in it deserve to be in a better movie, while most of the material is so ‘meh’ you have to wonder why they bothered.

I cannot emphasize enough that the “oops, I bought a ghost” premise is fantastic not just for horror but also comedy.  It is solid gold and if they had chosen to go the route of emphasizing characters being funny/witty like “Hatchet” had done for slasher movies, they could have turned this forgettable story into something interesting.

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Writer's Block Review: "Hatchet" (2006/07)

 To help me break with some writer’s block I have been suffering from since the large amount of writing I did for my finals in the middle of May, I am going back to basics.  You might be saying, “you haven’t updated this blog in months.”  To which I must replay, “yeah, I had other shit going on.” 

A large amount of this blog is just me writing about movies I have seen.  For a time I would rank/review all the movies I had seen from a given year.  I stopped emphasizing movies for whatever reason and now my brain is tired from thinking bigger thoughts about the world and suffering and how people in power know exactly how to fix it all, but they don’t.

Today I am going to write on here something simple, much like how I started simple when I went back to the gym following Covid.

Hatchet (2006/2007)

Written and Directed by Adam Green

Currently available on Amazon Prime.

The Premise

A boat tour of character actors sinks in the swamp near a haunted(?) cabin and the various colorful characters are killed off in gruesome fashion by the deformed revenant that stalks the marshland.

The Good

While not everyone in the movie is a great actor even that kind of works as it is more of a comedy.  The dialogue is frequently good, with quips and acting beats making it feel true to the various characters in the movie.  There is really no conversation or line that feels like the wrong person is talking.

The make up and gore effects capture the goofy tone that the dialogue does, and it all fits together quite well.  They go for over the top and a few of them shoot the moon.

Maybe I am shallow in that I consider the presence of Mercedes McNab to be a highlight.  She is gorgeous and has perhaps the best comedic timing one could hope for in a bimbo character.  I loved her as Harmony on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and here she is elevating the dumb bimbo role to an artform.

I am not going to call out all the actors or the cameos/small roles for horror icons, but they all work well enough for this movie.  Just some are better than others.

The Bad

I am glad they leaned in on the comedy.  Holy hell is this one of the most derivative outlines o a script you can get.  This is exactly the sort of cliché riddled movie that “Cabin in the Woods” was mercilessly mocking and if they had tried to play it completely straight it would have been complete garbage.

Bigger issues come with the shoestring budget, as Saturday Night Live has more convincing swamp sets.  Worse for the horror side of the story, everything is lit to a comical level… At one point they find a flashlight and its beam is completely drown out by the lighting they just have as the default.  Keep in mind this is supposed to be night, in a foggy swamp, it should be dark as hell.  I can’t help but imagine how you could light the woods in a way that makes it visually interesting without completely breaking the conceit, but you would need a lighting guy who costs money and they don’t have any of that.

As far as acting, unfortunately the worst performance is the movie’s final girl, played by Tamara Feldman.  She is playing this role way too straight and comes off like someone from a more serious iteration of this material who got lost.  Bad direction?  Maybe she just wasn’t into it because she did not reprise the role for the sequel.  Either way it is the weakest acting on the character with perhaps the 2^nd or 3^rd most screen time.

My biggest issue is with the ending, which I guess will be a spoiled here.  The ending feels like a cheat on the characters.  They are clever earlier in the movie trying to concoct a plan that played on what they knew about the monster’s origins, “let’s light him on fire, because his tragic death involved him trying to escape a burning cabin” and their plan is foiled by rain.  This plan is good.  And how it is foiled is also good.  That should have been the climax and ending of the movie, but that is instead the end of act two.

The ending comes when the characters have a protracted chase thru a graveyard and seemingly defeat the monster by stabbing it in the face.  Stabbing in the face is not any more effective than the myriad of other bullets, stabbings, and other harm they have visited upon the monster and yet they think they beat it.  The characters are surprised when the monster shows back up and ostensibly kills the remaining characters.  Downer ending, perfectly fine for this kind of movie.  BUT, that feels like a betrayal of the characters who were previously shown to at least be trying to get a handle on things.

To fix this I would have moved the chase scene to act 2, the characters realize they can’t get away after being chased in a circle back to the haunted cabin.  They then try to use the fire plan on the monster back at the haunted cabin, and then their plan is foiled and they all die.  Ramp up the character’s knowledge and insight in how to fight the monster as time goes on, make the audience feel like the characters are going thru an arc.  Currently their knowledge goes up and then crashes down.

For an example of how to do this well I have to point to the first “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie.  Nancy forms a plan on how to defeat Freddy Krueger by pulling him out of the dream world and into her house full of traps, it ostensibly works… but the twist ending shows that Freddy was not actually defeated and the characters die.  “Elm Street” ramped up to the twist ending, it felt like a surprise and it doesn’t feel like the characters failed to try everything they could.

The ending kind of ties into one more issue, there is no character arc.  You usually want to show your protagonists dealing with some kind of trauma or weakness over the course of the narrative, and by overcoming the weakness they help to overcome the monster.  In this instance the main character is dealing with a breakup from a previous relationship and the final girl is trying to investigate what happened to her brother and father.  Logically, neither of these tie into fighting a revenant… The best I could think is that during some key moment the Final Girl’s father and brother could rise up as revenants to try and help her escape?  And logically the main guy getting over his breakup by getting with the final girl would be the other side of things, you would have to establish that she left him because he was not a take-charge kind of guy and by the end of the movie he is a take-charge kind of guy.  Just… Something.

 

Conclusion

I don’t hate this movie, it is watchable.  The humor elevates in enough that the derivative elements and low production values are mostly forgiven.  I can’t help but wonder if they could have done something more creative with the backstory?  Maybe if they had the budget to make the presentation of the setting actually scary?

It is strange that one of my oldest movie reviews on this blog is for “Phantasm” which was similarly low budget but was far more creative with the premise… and I still like this one more because the acting and dialogue is better.  Maybe give Adam Green some money to work with so that he can escape the horror-ghetto his career seems to be in and see what he could do with something bigger and stranger?  I could see him  doing episodes of “Creepshow” or other horror anthology series without breaking a sweat.

This is not the first movie by Adam Green I have seen. “Digging up the Marrow”, which is sort of a cross between a mockumentary and the movie “Nightbreed” was, and it is better than “Hatchet”… and better than “Nightbreed”.

(Sidenote on “Phantasm”, I no longer consider it the worst movie I have ever seen by a long shot.  That title went to “Boyhood”.)

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.