Possession Movie Reviews
User reviews on Possession
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I was kinda shocked at how watchable this movie is. I was expecting another lame scary movie a la The Tall Man because the summer movie season is officially over and we rarely get to see anything good between mid August and mid October, but this reboot of The Poltergeist does what it does very well. I loved the chemistry between the father and his daughters and the whole personal divorce angle really made the movie believable in ways it wouldn't have been if it were just about a girl being possessed by the devil. The story is very familiar though you might learn a thing or two about Hebrew folklore because it takes a rabbi and his son to set everything straight by the end (or at least try). I didn't know anything about this branch of evil magic in the whole world of Judaism so it was certainly an eye opening experience for me. One thing's for sure: i won't be taking home any wooden boxes from strangers any time soon! -
*Another* movie about a cute suburban girlie girl with family issues getting possessed by an evil demon from the ancient world? Actually, yes, and surprisingly this movie is much more watchable than you might think, if for no other reason than the fact that it receives a very understated treatment from the director who tries to build the tension throughout instead of just showing us a screaming girl for 90 minutes. There's a lot of backstory that should have been better explained to the audience. I had to go home and look up the whole thing about dybbuks and ancient Hebrew lore to really understand what it was. It's supposed to be a wayward spirit that is neither here nor there but ends up wanting to cling to the closest living being to spread its evil. I'm not sure if this is really as prominent in the Jewish culture as the movie implies, but it still makes for some very entertaining moments in an otherwise relatively predictable movie. -
This was a scary movie! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, worrying that something big and scary was gonna happen because to be honest nothing really scary happens until almost 3/4 of the way through. That's sort of what makes the movie that much more tense - you know something is coming but it's all so calm and normal for most of the movie that you start to be lulled into a false sense of security that maybe everything will work itself out...but then of course there's no reason to make the movie, is there? The little girl who played the main character is superb in her role - I'm always shocked at child actors that can act this well. I was also really impressed by Kyra Sedgwick who is always superb in everything she does. She's a very underrated actress and I hope she gets more of the Meryl Streep type roles that she deserves to be playing. She's one of the best ever. -
This movie is definitely a retread of older and better horror movie classics, but it's a better retread than most movies we've seen of late that are inspired by The Poltergeist. The story is about another little girl who ends up possessed by an ancient evil spirit. One thing I don't get is why the characters that are always possessed are female. Don't guys get possessed too? It seems that the demons are always male and the victims/possessees are always female. They need to switch that around. Also, is it me, or does the guy who plays the dad look EXACTLY like Javier Bardem? I watched half the movie thinking it was Javier Bardem until my friend told me it wasn't him, it's the guy from Grey's Anatomy! I was 1000% convinced that it was Javier doing the role without a Spanish accent. Wow, it's creepy that two actors look that much alike! At least they're both talented. -
I remember watching the original Poltergeist when I was a teenager and it scared me A LOT. Still, I really liked the movie and to date it's one of the very, very few horror or scary movies that I actually enjoy watching. It goes beyond the typical gory and slasher antics of scary movies. I also like the fact that the acting is not cheesy or cringe inducing, even though it's probably a little over the top by today's standards. So when I heard that The Possession was an updated version of the Poltergeist, I had to check it out. I took my teens who promised they wouldn't get nightmares, and whaddya know, it's not as scary as The Poltergeist but I still wouldn't recommend taking your kids to see it. It's about a demonic spirit trapped in a wooden box that comes into the hands of a little girl who ends up becoming possessed by the demon. The family has to take her to a Rabbi to get her dispossessed because it's a demon unique to Hebrew culture. It's sort of a kosher version of The Poltergeist. I enjoyed it, though not as much as I wanted to. -
The Possession joins the long line of Hollywood movies inspired by the 1980s classic The Exorcist, though to be fair it has more in common with that forgotten 1985 animated classic from Disney, The Black Cauldron (at least in terms of it primary plot device). The cauldron in that tale (based on the series by Lloyd Alexander) was used to entomb the demonic soul of a king so evil that even the gods feared him. Whoever possessed the cauldron would possess the power to raise the dead and form an army of unkillable soldiers that would do their master’s bidding without thought or feeling. Needless to say, this was rather too frightening a concept for a Disney animated feature and the movie has since become all but forgotten (except by film critics like your truly and the likes of Tim Burton and Jeffrey Katzenberg).
The same concept of objects housing evil spirits is used to chilling effect in the new film The Possession, except that this time the demon inside is a “dybbuk”, a dispossessed soul of a dead being that (in Hebrew) works malevolently to possess the unfortunate mortal who has unleashed it from the object that houses it. The unfortunate soul in this case is a little girl named Emily whose parents (played by Kyra Sedgwick and Jeffrey Dean Morgan) have recently gotten a divorce. Emily and her sister are staying with their father for the weekend when he decides he needs help creating a home for his girls . . . so he takes them to a local garage sale where they make the seemingly innocent purchase of a dark wood box with an inscription on the front written in Hebrew.
The movie claims to be inspired by a real life story, though naturally the skeptic in me has serious doubts about what may actually have transpired. Regardless, Emily opens the box and is soon possessed by the dybbuk, which leads her to all sorts of bizarre and extreme behaviors that have her family deeply worried. Eventually, they take her to a Jewish professor who knows a thing or two about dybbuks and aid arrives in the form of a rabbi’s young son who believes he can exorcise the dybbuk from Emily’s body.
The plot is standard possession horror movie stuff, but the treatment is what makes the movie work as well as it does. Nothing feels forced or overtly supernatural. In fact, until well into the second half, the action is played with utter realism and makes the final act that much more palatable. A late entry into the summer movie season, but definitely one of the better ones. -
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I did not like this film and do not recommend seeing it in the theaters. The film was not scary at all and it was extremely predictable and quite silly as well. I am so tired of horror films being this bad, can someone please make a good scary film because this is getting ridiculous. I keep going to see these films and I keep getting disappointed and I am mad about that. Instead of being scared I was laughing most of the time and that is not a good sign for a horror flick. Overall, you should save your time and money and see a different movie. -
Possession, starring Aaron Eckhart, is a film adaptation of an award winning novel from 1990. An academic researcher, working in London, discovers important letters from an old poet that expose infidelity. This film is all about love and language, and I didn’t really understand most of it. The acting is great in the film but the subject matter just wasn’t enough for me. I wasn’t interested in the story, maybe it is for an older audience. Possession spans centuries, as the main characters discovers more about the infidelity and therefore we learn more about it and come to our own conclusions. To be honest, I just couldn’t get into this movie. -
I did not like this film and do not recommend seeing it in the theaters because it is not worth your time or money. This film was no different from all the other horror flicks and I was very disappointed because I thought it will be different and better. The film was full of silly cliches and the only original thing about this film is that Catholic-fixated horror subgenre was converted to Judaism. THe film was not original in any other way and it was quite boring and not scary at all. It was also hard to understand this film have of the time and I was very confused by it. Overall, I suggest you go and see a different film.
