The Possession

The Possession is a 2012 American supernatural horror film directed by Ole Bornedal and produced by Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, and J. R. Young, and written by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White. It stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Natasha Calis, Grant Show, Madison Davenport, and Matisyahu.

The Possession
Theatrical release poster
Directed byOle Bornedal
Produced by
Written by
Starring
Music byAnton Sanko
CinematographyDan Laustsen
Edited byEric L. Beason
Production
company
Ghost House Pictures
North Box Productions
Distributed byLionsgate
Release date
  • August 30, 2012 (2012-08-30) (Hong Kong & Macau)
  • August 31, 2012 (2012-08-31) (United States)
Running time
92 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Polish
Budget$14 million[2]
Box office$82.9 million[3]

The film was shot in early 2011. Parts of the film were filmed at a former mental institution, Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, British Columbia. The story is based on the allegedly haunted dybbuk box.[4] Bornedal cited films like The Exorcist as an inspiration, praising their subtlety.[5]

It was released in the US on August 31, 2012, with the film premiering at the Film4 FrightFest and received mixed reviews from film critics.[6]

Plot

A middle-aged woman stands in her living room looking at an old wooden box with Hebrew writing on it as it whispers and humming a Polish phrase saying "Zjem twoje serce" which means "I will eat your heart" (As the box comes from an interwar Poland). The woman prepares to destroy the box with a hammer, but she begins to shake uncontrollably. Unable to move, the left side of her face begins to droop and she is knocked to the floor by an unseen attacker, and the force throws her violently around the room. Her son arrives and find his mother, now injured and unconscious on the floor.

Basketball coach Clyde Brenek (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his wife Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick) are finishing up their divorce to go their separate ways. Their daughters – Emily (Natasha Calis) and Hannah (Madison Davenport) – help Clyde settle into his new home during the weekend. At a yard sale, Emily discovers a box, the same one from the middle-age woman’s living room. While holding the box, Emily looks into a window of the woman’s home and sees her lying in bed, now wrapped in bandages, and being attended to by a nurse. The woman looks out to see Emily holding the box and screams in horror, startling Emily. Clyde buys the box for her, and they later find that there seems no way to open it. That night, she hears whispering coming from the box. She is able to open it, and finds a tooth, a dead moth, a wooden figurine, and a ring, which she begins to wear. Emily becomes solitary, and her behavior becomes increasingly disturbing, even becoming possessive over the box. At school, she violently attacks a classmate when he takes her box, resulting in a meeting with Clyde, Stephanie, the principal, and her teacher. Emily's teacher recommends that she spend time away from the box, so it is left in the classroom. That night, curious about the mysterious noises from the box, the teacher tries to open it, but a malevolent force violently throws her out a window.

Emily tells Clyde about an invisible woman who lives in her box who says that Em is "special". Alarmed by her behavior, Clyde attempts to dispose of the box. During their next weekend at Clyde's, Emily gets progressively more upset with the disappearance of the box and accuses Clyde of abusing her. She flees the house and recovers the box. The voice from the box begins conversing with her in the Polish language, before seemingly possessing her. Clyde takes the box to a university professor who tells him that it is a dybbuk box that dates back to the 1920s; it was used to contain a dybbuk, a dislocated spirit as powerful as a devil. Clyde enters Emily's room and reads Psalm 91 until a dark but invisible force throws the Tanakh across the room. Clyde then travels to a Hasidic community in Brooklyn and learns from the rabbi Tzadok (Matisyahu) that the possession has three main stages; in the third stage, the dybbuk latches onto its human host, becoming one entity with it. The only way to defeat the dybbuk is to lock it back inside the box via a forced ritual. Upon further examination on the box, Tzadok learns that the dybbuk's name is "Abyzou", or the "Taker of Children".

Emily has a seizure and is taken to the hospital for an MRI. During the procedure, Stephanie and Hannah are horrified when they see the dybbuk's face in the MRI scans next to Emily's heart. Clyde and Tzadok join the family at the hospital and attempt to conduct an exorcism, which results in a struggle between Clyde and the dybbuk. Clyde survives the attack, but the dybbuk is passed from Emily to him. Tzadok performs a successful exorcism; Abyzou emerges from Clyde and crawls back into the box. The family is reunited, with Clyde and Stephanie's love rekindled. Tzadok drives away with the box in Clyde's vehicle but the car is hit by a truck, killing him. The box lands safely some distance from the wreckage, and Abyzou's whispering is heard from it.

Cast

Production

The film was shot in early 2011.

Bornedal stated that he was drawn to The Possession's script, having seen it as more of an allegory for divorce than as a true horror film.[4] Actors Sedgwick and Morgan were brought in to play the Breneks; Morgan chose to participate after seeing Calis' audition tape.[7] Parts of the movie were filmed at a former mental institution, Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, British Columbia.[8]

The owner of the dybbuk box, Jason Haxton, offered to send it to producer Sam Raimi, who was both interested and reluctant. Raimi laughingly told an Entertainment Weekly interviewer, "I didn't want anything to do with it. I'm scared of the thing." He also told the interviewer that he was raised in a Conservative Jewish home: "You don't hear about dybbuks when you go to synagogue. I know the demonic lore of The Exorcist. But what does my faith believe about demonic possession? ... The stories chilled me to the bone."[9] Jeffrey Dean Morgan felt similarly: "In the research I did, I started getting creeped out. My girlfriend was like, 'Let's just make sure that we don't actually go near the real Dybbuk Box.'"[9]

"We were like, 'Hell, no,'" recalls screenwriter Juliet Snowden. "'We don't want to see it. Don't send us a picture of it.'"[10]

Director Ole Bornedal said, "Some really weird things happened. I've never stood underneath a neon light before that wasn't lit, that all of a sudden exploded. The worst thing was, five days after we wrapped the movie, all the props burned. This storage house in Vancouver burned down to the ground, and the fire department does not know the cause. I'm not a superstitious man, and I would like to say, 'Yeah, it's just a coincidence.'"[9]

Release

Critical reception

The film has received mixed reviews from critics. It currently holds a rating of 40% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 98 reviews, with an average rating of 5.11/10. The general consensus states, "It may be based on a true story, but that doesn't excuse the way The Possession repeatedly falls back on hoary ghost movie clichés – or the unintentional laughs it provides."[11] On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 45/100, indicating "mixed or average reviews", based on scores from 26 critics.[12]

However, Roger Ebert gave the film ​3 1⁄2 stars, writing "The Exorcist has influenced a lot of films, and [The Possession] is one of the better ones".[13] Richard Roeper also gave the movie a B+.[14]

Box office

The Possession grossed $49.1 million in domestic market and $33.8 million in other territories. The film ranked #1 in its opening weekend, taking in an estimated $17.7 million, and an estimated $21.3 million for the full Labor Day Weekend.[15]

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See also

 Film portal  Speculative fiction/Horror portal

References
  1. 'Possession': What Is A Dibbuk Box? Bloody Disgusting
  2. Kaufman, Amy (30 August 2012). "'The Possession' will scare off competition over slow Labor Day" – via LA Times.
  3. "The Possession (2012) - Financial Information".
  4. EXCL: Director & Cast Talk to Us About The Possession Shock Till You Drop
  5. (San Diego Comic-Con '12) 'The Possession' Director Ole Bornedal On Combining His Own Voice With The Ghosthouse Aesthetic Bloody Disgusting
  6. Film4 FrightFest unveils horror-filled lineup: 'Possession,' 'Chained,' 'Sinister' among screeners Chicago Tribune
  7. "'The Possession' Stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Natasha Calis". bloody-disgusting.com.
  8. "'The Possession' Filmed at Eerie Locations for Full Effect". Toonari Post. July 2012. Archived from the original on October 29, 2012.
  9. Collis, Clark (August 3, 2012). "Little Box of Horrors". Entertainment Weekly. pp. 50–55.
  10. Lussenhop, Jessica (30 August 2012). "Devil's Wine Box: Missouri's tie to 'The Possession'". Riverfront Times.
  11. The Possession. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  12. The Possession. Metacritic.com.
  13. "Robert Ebert: Reviews: The Possession". Sun Times.
  14. Richard Roeper: Reviews: The Possession. REELZCHANNEL.
  15. "Weekend Report: 'The Possession' Leads Typically Quiet Labor Day - Box Office Mojo". boxofficemojo.com.
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