The King of Venereal Horror has begat a true Prince of Pain. Brandon Cronenberg, the 40-year old offspring of Baron of Blood David Cronenberg, takes up his pops’ mantle circa the turn of the century, when the elder Cronenberg began to pivot away from visceral science-fiction-tinged horrors (Videodrome) and bodily transformations (The Fly) and towards more dramatic affairs (A Dangerous Method) and electric thrillers (A History of Violence). As one sun sets, another rises and with Possessor, a movie that marries the chilly intersection between technology and humanity and some absolutely spine-tingling visual depictions of bloodshed, the younger Cronenberg has come into his own.
A major step-up from his intriguing though overly-cold debut Antiviral, Possessor is a movie told with purpose, caked with stark originality and presented with tastefully gloomy aplomb. Andrea Riseborough (Mandy) is Vos, an agent of death who uses biotech to “hack” into people’s brains. Once inside the mark, Vos is a puppeteer, a possessor, forcing the bodies she’s captured to assassinate high-profile targets at the behest of wealthy shadow clients. Well taken to her career, Vos is a woman of great violence, propelled by a deep-seated ferocity that lingers beneath her glossy surface. Gore resides in her soul and on the screen and Riseborough’s turn as the chilly killer is searing.
Vos prefers to be intimate with her kills, opting for the proximity of a blade or fire-poker over the distance of a firearm. The film opens with her (inside an African-American woman) stabbing an obese man to death. Over and over and over again. Her handler (a disturbingly detached Jennifer Jason Leigh) soon sends Vos on her next assignment, which involves kidnapping and tapping into the brain of shined-up coke dealer Colin (Christopher Abbott). Through his relationship with girlfriend Ava (Tuppence Middleton), Colin (now Vos) has assess to father John Parse (Sean Bean), a wildly successful tech retailer who needs to be offed in order to make way for their client, an heir-not-so-apparent. With Vos’ frequent inhabitations creating an increasingly larger rift between her own self and her work, the line between bodies becomes blurred, shaky, and always accented with blood.
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Cronenberg never shies away from the gruesome, sloppy brutality of murder, leaning his camera over the shoulder of his executioner, peering into the brute physicality rather than cutting away. He delivers crimson slashes of high gore that will likely earn the film a stronger than R-rating and those without a stomach for the high-end of human mutilation and viscera (and fairly graphic sex) should reconsider checking out of this one. Though many are sure to remark on the extreme instances of violence, the violence is not an end in itself nor is it used too liberally. Visceral and disturbing though it may be, the violence becomes a narrative tool used to propel the story and underscore the character’s detachment from her own humanity. Cronenberg’s presentation of such is no throwaway toy for cheap exploitation, it’s a means towards an end, and he uses it not exactly sparingly but to a precise degree.
Voss has a close relationship with violence. She is bedmates with it. An ally. A friend. As it comes to consume her and cloud her, Cronenberg explores the danger of untethering from your corporeal body and how this detachment bears questions of identity. Of becoming an imposter in your own life. Visitations to other bodies leaves Vos a shell, a hitchhiker across a spectrum of brains. Possessor builds its world of body-hopping on viable-enough neuroscience: the controlling of bodies through electrical stimulation of the brain. Like an episode of Black Mirror, the film explores how advanced technology can be exploited and turned against those who seek to improve their stake in life: how innovation will always be taken advantage of by someone sinister. His vision of the future is troubling, particularly as humanity trends towards tech-obsession.
The production design, reminiscent at times of The Matrix, is transportive but the real kicker is the film’s effects. All the effects are practical, in-camera tricks, the work of dedicated experimentation, and the crew’s enthusiasm for practical effects basically melts off the screen, like a deteriorating wax face with a hairdryer aimed at it. In an era of over-reliance on digital, Possessor resolves to needle us in the gut. There’s something so much more satisfying – and disturbing – when your brain gets tricked into thinking that something is real and that’s precisely what Cronenberg has done here. He’s hacked into our brains.
CONCLUSION: A brilliantly rendered technology-fueled nightmare, ‘Possessor’ announces Brandon Cronenberg as an uncompromising storyteller, one who manages brilliant, thought-provoking plotting amid incredibly affecting production elements (including an extreme reverence for practical special effects.)
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By: Matt Oakes
Started blogging about film in college when the university paper wouldn’t have him. Dislikes your consensus film Twitter favorites. Devotee of horror movies that make him die a little inside. Catches films at festivals when he can. Proud SFCS and OFCS member and Tomatometer-approved critic. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
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