Possessor
Writer/director Brandon Cronenberg follows up his 2012 cult hit, Antiviral, with another body horror film in the vein of his dad's classics from the late 80s. Like those films, this one has a simple sci-fi premise that enables Cronenberg to explore a variety of areas within the current culture. This time the premise is that there exists a technology that allows people to possess others and, in the case of the company featured in this film, use them as disposable, untraceable assassins. Andrea Riseborough plays Tasya Vos, an elite possessor who is also starting to have some difficulties separating herself from her possessees.
What makes this movie stand out is different from what makes it work so well. It stands out because it uses the basic premise to explore allegories of actors and roles, alienated work, and a whole lot of uncanny (in the Freudian sense) body stuff. In fact, the movie feels like Cronenberg wrote it based off of an outline of Freud's Uncanny essay. Once I cottoned on to what was happening (the brief shot of the automaton toy in the early goings did that for me), I was able to predict a few plot and gore elements accurately. But that's cool! It's nifty that a movie engages so much with an essay that has frequently been used to talk about horror movies, and it's doubly cool when it namechecks Walter Benjamin, which ties the body horror stuff in with the alienated work aspects of the movie. This movie will be featured in college level film classes for some time to come, in other words, and that's great. It deserves it.
But all of that fun theory stuff isn't enough to make a movie worth watching. Back in Shocktober I lamented those "elevated" horror films that get too heady and forget to provide the story and scares that drive the genre. Well, Cronenberg doesn't forget those elements. The movie is really well constructed, never too slow or too fast. The gross scenes are suitably gross but don't overwhelm the characters or story. The heady ideas are there if you want to see them. The movie treats them as little inside jokes, often just straight up jokes. In other words, though this is a movie with a weird premise, a brain, and a truly extraordinary sense of style (give me all of those colored lights and trippy mind-melding scenes, please), it is also a pretty freaking solid crowd pleaser. I mean, I guess I wouldn't call the movie a happy-go-lucky romp, but I would call it a very good time at the movies if your definition of a good time involves body horror and a bit of light academic shading. And mine definitely does. It's really great.
A