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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