Pos­ses­sor – first look review

Bran­don Cronenberg’s 2012 debut, Antivi­ral, was a styl­ish body hor­ror about America’s obses­sion with celebri­ty. Now he’s flex­ing his film­mak­ing mus­cles again with a cau­tion­ary tale about where the ills of cap­i­tal­ism might lead us. There’s always a strong impulse among crit­ics to com­pare Cro­nen­berg Jr to his father, but Pos­ses­sor proves that Bran­don is more than capa­ble of stand­ing on his own two feet as an artist.

Andrea Rise­bor­ough stars as Tasya Vos, an agent for a com­pa­ny that spe­cialis­es in car­ry­ing out assas­si­na­tions by insert­ing the con­scious­ness of their agents into unwit­ting per­pe­tra­tors. After receiv­ing a new con­tract from her boss Gird­er (Jen­nifer Jason Leigh), she enters the body of Col­in (Christo­pher Abbott) with instruc­tions to kill his fiancé and would-be father-in-law so that a third par­ty can col­lect a size­able pay­day. Tasya doesn’t ask too many ques­tions; she’s excep­tion­al­ly good at her job, and indeed seems more inter­est­ed in her unusu­al occu­pa­tion that her estranged hus­band or young son.

Nat­u­ral­ly, inhab­it­ing another’s body comes with com­pli­ca­tions, and the line between Tasya and Col­in becomes increas­ing­ly blurred as their sep­a­rate con­scious­ness­es fight for con­trol over one ves­sel. Images of vis­cer­al and bloody hor­ror are spar­ing but incred­i­bly effec­tive, while Rise­bor­ough and Abbott both give engross­ing per­for­mances. There’s a glib­ness to the script which under­lines Cronenberg’s point – increas­ing­ly it feels as though we’re mov­ing toward a soci­ety where every­thing has a price, even anoth­er person’s autonomy.

Although it could stand to shave a few min­utes off its run­time, Pos­ses­sor ben­e­fits from a fas­ci­nat­ing premise and excep­tion­al cast. Explor­ing themes of iden­ti­ty, moral­i­ty and gen­dered acts of vio­lence, the film lingers in the mind long after the clos­ing cred­its, the gore impos­si­ble to shake once it’s in your head.