Possessor
(2020) 103 min
Rated: R (Extreme gore, explicit sex and nudity)
Country: Canada
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rossif Sutherland, Sean Bean
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★★
An assassin possesses people to complete job contracts.
Synopsis:
A woman inserts a small needle into her scalp and turns a dial. She goes through a range of emotions.
The woman is named Holly Bergman. She enters a lounge full of guests and stabs a man repeatedly and violently, killing him. After the murder she says “pull me out”. She attempts to commit suicide with a gun, but hesitates on pulling the trigger. Instead she waits as cops arrive and exchanges gunfire with them. They shoot her to death.
Tasya Vos (Riseborough) wakes from the ordeal coughing and vomits. She is in a lab setting, dressed in white scrubs. Her boss, Girder (Leigh), helps her out of her helmet and back onto a bed while a technician calls out, “Brain death in the host is confirmed. The link is clearly severed. We’re done.”
Tasya takes a questionnaire after the interfacing. She recalls items that belong to her. She pulls a mounted butterfly in a box, remembering that she killed it and mounted it while young. She regrets killing it. Girder remarks that she passes the test as normal with no adverse effects on her mental state. She is informed that the next contract is big and almost finalized. She asks for time off to see Michael but is informed by Girder that she and Michael have been separated. Girder tells Tasya that she once said she was a danger to her family. Still, Tasya requests some time off.
She visits her son, Ira, and husband, Michael (Sutherland), and enjoys a meal with them. Afterwards she watches news about a shocking murder of a lawyer by a woman named Holly Bergman.
Later while she and Michael have sex she visualizes the knife stabbing the lawyer in the murder she committed earlier while possessing Holly. Afterwards she calls the lab and requests to go “back to work”. Michael comes down to the kitchen to talk to her but while he is talking Tasya visualizes a wound bleeding from his neck.
Back at work, Tasya struggles to stay focused and Girder tells her how she wants Tasya to replace her eventually since she is aging. She presents slides of the lawyer’s murder and asks why Tasya used a knife instead of the gun Holly was given. Questioning if Tasya is really okay.
Girder informs Tasya of her next job. She is to assassinate John Parse (Bean), the CEO of Zoothroo, and his daughter Ava. Ava is engaged to a drug dealer named Colin (Abbott), who Tasya is supposed to use as a vessel to carry out the crime and to commit suicide. The contract is to Reed Parse, who is John’s stepson and who will inherit the fortune if those three are killed.
Tasya is inserted into the body of Colin Tate and must assume his everyday demeanor. Colin wakes next to Ava, but she feels that there is something off with Colin. Colin attempts to go to work at Zoothroo, but has trouble. Tasya begins to hallucinate and feel sick. Girder checks in with her because of her vitals spike. Tasya lies to her and tells her that everything is normal.
Colin arrives home in the evening to find Ava and her friends doing coke. Colin has awkward conversations with them and Ava feels isolated from him. Later the two have sex and Colin starts disassociating and is Tasya body but with a penis.
Tasya calls Girder and is told to re-calibrate before the dinner with Parse that evening. Tasya inserts a needle into Colin’s scalp and calibrates as Holly did before.
Colin attends the party and is instructed by Girder to start a public fight with John. Colin behaves like a drunk and asks for an apology from John who made fun of him earlier. He pushes John and calls Ava a bitch before being kicked out of the house.
Colin has a gun to do the assassination, but just before killing he walks over to John, he picks up an iron poker next to a fireplace. Colin sits next to a drunk John and puts his gun on the table. Colin beats John with the poker and shoves the point into John’s mouth. Ava walks back into the room and tries to run out, but Colin shoots after her, missing her. Colin/Tasya resumes twisting the poker in John’s mouth and then pulls out one of John’s eyes.
Colin leaves and finds Ava crawling on the floor, bloody. He shoots her in the head.
As Tasya raises the gun to Colin’s mouth to commit suicide, their consciousness pull apart for a moment and Colin drops the gun and stabs at the implant in his head. This causes Tasya to cough up blood in her real body. Colin runs away from the house in fear.
Colin steals new clothes and pulls a large glass shard out of his head. Colin finds his way to Ava’s friend Reeta’s house. He asks to stay there for a few days since she is leaving for Chicago. A co-worker of Colin’s, Eddie, comes over and stuns Colin. Eddie repairs the implant and revives Tasya inside of Colin.
While Eddie re-calibrates Colin and Tasya, Tasya re-awakens in Colin and finds that Eddie is dead. Reeta is also dead. Tasya tries to have Colin shoot himself in the head, but fails.
Colin ends up at Tasya’s house, feeling that he knows the place. He knocks on the door and takes Michael hostage with the gun. He screams at Tasya inside of him to “come out”.
Tasya talks to Colin, claiming that it was he who truly killed Ava. Colin threatens to kill Michael, and Tasya tells him to do it. Michael hits the gun out of Colin’s hand while he’s distracted, but Colin grabs a cleaver off the kitchen counter and attacks Michael with it. The gun is sliced out of his hand and Colin stabs Michael to death.
Colin puts the gun’s barrel in his mouth and says “pull me out”, but is unable to pull the trigger.
Colin gets stabbed in the neck by Tasya’s son, Ira. Instinctively, Colin shoots at Ira, mortally wounding the boy. Colin and Ira bleed out on the kitchen floor facing each other. Ira says “pull me out” as he dies.
Tasya wakes up in the lab alongside Girder who was inside of Ira Vos.
Girder tests Tasya on items that are hers. Tasya looks at the mounted butterfly. She remembers that it was a butterfly she killed and mounted as a little girl. Girder remarks “Good”.
Review:
Possessor is an interesting film written by Brandon Cronenberg, son of the legendary body horror filmmaker David Cronenberg. In this aspect, the son follows in his father’s footsteps. Striking visuals abound as Tasya loses control of the bodies she possesses. Artifacts and hallucinations form and blur the film. There are flashes of images so that the viewer is disoriented and feels this loss of control too.
There is also very good sound design to go along with the visuals. Audible disruptions help to confuse when Tasya is losing focus.
This film is well acted. Andrea Riseborough’s Tasya is mesmerizing as she repeats dialog and tries to mimic the actions of her future hosts. Reactions feel natural and realistic. Viewers are pulled along in this ride and lines between characters are blurred and meld together.
The shocking gore in the film helps to push the narrative along as Tasya no longer thinks as person who has regrets in killing and she stops feeling emotional attachment to the people being murdered. All emotional ties are cut as she repeatedly shoots and stabs victims. They are no longer humans to her but things. Mere objects.
Yet she can’t pull the trigger. The hesitation with her necessary suicide is the catalyst for losing control. If she can’t leave her body by dying, she’s stuck in the host’s shell. It’s only when she severs all ties with her family by literally killing them that she is able to become a better assassin.
Overall this film is engaging, but the pacing may be too slow for people without patience for a slow burn thriller. There is ample gore and this film isn’t recommended for the squeamish. However it is an interesting character study and a strong recommend!
Concepts somewhat similar to Possessor are explored in other cyberpunk media such as the anime Ghost in the Shell.
