Possession - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

This weeks movie is going to be very, very hard for me to review.  Mostly because certain aspects were so confusing.  That aside, I did think it was an incredibly well made movie and it does warrant at least another watch.

We see a known actor for a change, in a young Sam Neill (Mark) returning from work to his beautiful wife Anna in Berlin.  The movie is shot right beside the Berlin wall which I don't think is accidental in any sense given the division throughout the movie between the husband and wife.  It almost feels like the director is trying to show the unseen by giving the incredible emotion of this movie a solid presence.  The hard, cold concrete and stark scenes set in Berlin convey their relationship wonderfully.


That is fundamentally what the movie seemed to be... the portrayal of a relationship downward spiraling faster than is can recover from and the breakdown of the characters.   It is a very uncomfortable movie and has scenes which are very difficult to watch between Mark and Anna, including a horrendously nasty physically abusive scene between the 2 of them.  Also as a parent, I found the presence of their son and his neglect by Anna after Mark has left their home very uncomfortable.  The characters seem to be emotionally unhinged and self involved to the extreme, concentrating on how everything effects them with Anna even having no concern for her own son.

In our storyline Mark discovers his wife has been unfaithful after she asks for a divorce.  As the movie continues, it becomes clear he has too, but that seems unimportant and the concentration seems to be very much upon Anna's infidelity.  In fact, the movie seems to concentrate very much on Marks feelings and portraying things from Marks point of view.  Any scenes which are meant to be from Anna's perspective seem incomplete confusing or contradictory.  Her personality was very hard to make sense of.  I wasn't sure if this was a deliberate thing to add to the mania and to hint towards the complexity of women who can be almost impossible to understand or whether it was an oversight on behalf of the director.

Mark hires a private detective to follow Anna.  This is where the confusion started for me in earnest.  There is a man/octopus thing (very convincingly put together btw) that Anna is sleeping with.  It develops more and more throughout the film by eating body parts it seems, fed to it by Anna.  One very odd and lingering scene shows Anna making love to the 'thing' and repeating the word 'almost'...  The detective and his partner are murdered by Anna when they find out too much and she feeds them to the man/octopus?  While this is happening Mark starts to date his son Bobs teacher, a 'good' version of Anna , called Helen (played by the same actress) who has her 'kindness' visibly displayed by brilliant green eyes.

A scene which deserves a mention in the movie is Anna's mental and physical breakdown in the Subway.  It is quite lengthy, VERY uncomfortable (I think because its so raw and human) and very well executed and culminates in her sitting on the concrete with blood running from her head and what looked like a mixture of blood, pus and urine coming from between her legs.  Again, I didn't quite understand this part but visually it was very dramatic and effective.  She makes a comment about the episode being her 'loss of faith'.

The ending of the movie is very confusing but mind blowing.  I won't completely spoil it, but the man/octopus reaches its final evolution into a doppelganger of Mark.  Helen is left in the appartment with Bob and the Doppelganger.  The same 3 physical beings are we started with fundementally.

This movie will probably leave you with more questions than answers and feeling a little confused, but if you watch it, you would have to admit that its a very powerful, dark,ominous and disturbing movie with phenomenal acting  from the leads, moreso Isabelle Adjani.  You certainly won't have seen anything like it before.

Thumbs up from me.

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Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL - Will's Pick: A Serbian Film.

NOTE: In honour of Halloween, We're taking a break from the DPP list.

This week, reviewers were given a free choice of any horror movie. 

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Year: 2010

Alternate Titles: Srpski film

DPP Status: N/A

BBFC Status: Passed with 4m11s of cuts in 2010

IMDB: A Serbian Film

Wikipedia: A Serbian Film

DVD: Cut UK version, The UK DVD is the strongest version (officially) available with English Subtitles.

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***WARNING***

Contains some mild spoilers, and descriptions of highly distasteful subject matter.


While this film is very well made, serious, and handles its subjects responsibly, it is absolutely NOT for everyone.

Bear in mind that I have described slaughter-houses, disembowelling, mutilation, self cannibalism and foetus-eating without feeling the need to issue a "taste" warning. 


"A Serbian Film" has made me issue one...

First up, full disclosure; I did not watch this film this week - I watched it, and wrote most of this review, back in late March, and it's been sat waiting for this week, so that it can be posted here, despite not being from the DPP list.

I also watched this film without the intention of reviewing it so (apart from skipping back through it for the boob / body tallies) I did not take notes - I may therefore be wrong on more details than usual. That said,  thoughts are as follows:

This is one of those films so controversial that it is impossible to discuss the film on it's own merits; one is almost forced to address the controversy too.

Anyone who follows movie news (especially Horror movie news) will already know that some of the most vile acts ever committed to celluloid appear right here (albeit simulated).

However the media, and most especially the mainstream media, have taken this (admittedly already sensational) aspect of the film and amped it up to the Nth degree.

Despite what you may have led to believe, this is not a film (even in it uncut version) that never cuts away. The vilest act happen (thankfully) off camera.

Also, as I've already mentioned, all of these acts are simulated; So as far as I'm concerned, as no-one was hurt in the making of the movie, anything goes, as long as it can be justified by context.

Which is also the rub for the BBFC who required 4m 12s of cuts before the film was awarded an 18 rating. Their justification for some of these cuts is that the film contained "images of sexual and sexualised violence which have a tendency to eroticise or endorse the behaviour. "

I cry bullshit.

At no point are any of the repugnant acts portrayed in this movie presented as good or glamorous things.

The single most vile scene in the move is the now infamous 'newborn' scene, this is shown to our hero as a film-within-a-film, and causes him to be physically sick - in what way is that "Glamorising" anything?

Despite all of the warnings above, I'm going to hide the next piece of text - highlight it with your mouse if you want to know what the 'newborn' scene is exactly... [ Milos is shown a video of a man in a lab-coat delivering (very graphically) a baby. He then proceeds to pull down his pants and have sex with the child, while it is still umbilically attached to its smiling mother. ]

The other troubling acts in the movie are all committed by our hero - after he has been kidnapped and forcibly drugged; once the drugs wear off, and he discovers what he has done, he is left a broken man!

In short NOTHING in this film is glamorised or "endorsed". I suspect that the people viewing the film for the BBFC were repelled by it's subject matter (as all right thinking people should be) and felt in their gut that they MUST remove at least some of the worst of it, however (quite rightly) the BBFC must justify their decisions and "it's just wrong" isn't on the list of acceptable reasons, and so the only excuse they could give was the "glamorises violence" one.

Several  of the cuts , I cannot agree with; They rob the film of some of its earlier, retentively minor horror, and make what follows even more of a shock to the system, and in one case makes a scene confusing, while not removing the most offensive element  - a masked character is being raped; the removal of the mask (and the lead characters discover of the identity of the victim) is pivotal, however, in the cut version we do not see the mask coming off, and we kind of have to 'figure out' who it was from the immediate aftermath. I cannot understand this cut; the same character is clearly in exactly the same predicament either-way and I can't see how the unmasking is the problem! Also, a few scenes exist (this time to demonstrate the kind of people we are dealing with) in which sex acts are inter cut with images of children IN A NON SEXUALISED CONTEXT; again, the BBFC won't have any of that!

So what if the film itself; one thing that's surprising about it is how well made it is - much of the media has made it out to be a entirely meritless piece of trash, probably out of fear of reprisals from the moral majority if they DARE to say anything remotely positive, but this couldn't be further from the truth.

It is well filmed and acted throughout, and rather than being the wall-to-wall torture-fest you may have been led to believe, a decent chunk of the film is devoted to things like plot and character development - it's about 45 mins before anything violent happens, and even after that point there is at least as much drama on screen as sex and violence.

In the first half of the movie, we meet Milo - an ex porn star, family man, and all round okay guy. He and his family are living hand to mouth and trying to eek out the savings he still has from when he was working.

He is approached (through a friend) by a director and offered an obscene amount of money to come out of retirement and star in a commissioned 'art film'. After discussing it with his wife, they agree that he should take the part.

Once he realises that he is expected to be violent towards his costars, and preform in front of children, he attempts to quit; it is at this point that the director shown him the 'newborn porn' scene in a misguided attempt to win him over (!) when this fails he is kidnapped and drugged.

Here the film takes an interesting turn, and (if you have the stomach for it) it turns into a bloody good thriller.

Milo wakes up several days later, on his own bed, covered in blood, with no recollection of what happened to him; he is left to retrace his steps and try and work out what was done to him (and what he did) from his fragmented memories, and a pile of videotapes he recovers - think memento with snuff, porn, rape and paedophilia and you're on the right track.

Much to my surprise, it's a decent film; I'm glad I saw it,but I will almost certainly never watch it again, and it certainly isn't for everyone.

If you though "Saw 2" was too violent, or if you have to cover your eyes during the first half of "I spit on your grave" this is not for you.

If the only horror you enjoy is the 'hero killer' type, where you root for the madman while he hacks his way through a line of cardboard cut outs masquerading as characters; this is not for you.

Frankly, it not really for anyone, but if you genuinely want to be horrified, not scared, not shocked (although it will undoubtedly shock you) but actually shaken to your core HORRIFIED, you could do a lot worse than to see this film.

But make sure that's genuinely what you want, because it can't be unseen.

And if you are going to see it - Track down the Uncut version, The BBFC butchered version loses much of its impact, and with it, the point of the film, and of Milos' journey...

Tim Anderson, over at Bloody Disgusting, likened watching the movie to having one's soul raped, and ended his review with this warning:

"If what I have written here is enough to turn your feelings of wonder into a burning desire to watch this monstrosity, then perhaps I haven't been clear enough. You don't want to see Serbian Film. You just think you do"

Body Count: 13*
Animal Body Count: 0
Boob Count: 9
Most memorable death: Penis to the eye socket(!)

* One of these isn't confirmed dead, but I imagine the injuries would have been fatal.

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As this is a non-cannon review, it will not carry a separate "Reader Review" page, you may add your own reviews in the comments section.