Review #162: Possessor Uncut (2020)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #17: Possessor Uncut (2020)

After watching this movie, I remarked that this felt like a long episode of Black Mirror (and not just because it stars Andrea Riseborough). I stand by that statement.

Much like the last movie I reviewed, I really thought this was a fine movie, but it had some plot elements that I simply didn't understand, that really would have made the viewing experience a lot more satisfying. Maybe if I had watched it a second time I could have picked up on them? I don't know, but the movie itself wasn't so good that I was clambering for a re-watch.

Possessor (the Bucket List specified the Uncut version, I don't know what's different between the two, though I have some ideas) takes place in a near-futuristic world where a shadowy organization has technology that can put an implant in your brain that lets one of them take control of your mind and make you do whatever they want. The main character, Tasya Vos, is an operative who uses controlled subjects to commit assassinations, and then commit suicide (which then ends the mental link, sending the operative back into their own body). The plot follows Tasya after she's been having issues doing her job due to commitments in her personal life, and when she takes control of a worker at some sort of.... information-gathering company to try and kill the CEO and his daughter to bring the company down, something goes wrong and the host's mind starts wrestling with Tasya's mind for control.

After the credits rolled, we were both confused at many of the events in the film, so my wife read a synopsis on Wikipedia that helped the movie make a lot more sense, but it did so by asserting many things that I DID NOT feel were represented in the film itself. For example, the synopsis made it clear that Tasya is shown to have violent tendencies near the beginning of the story, which informs some of the decisions she makes later on. (I did not interpret the events that way; she had been speaking of guilt prior to this, so I assumed the flashes of violent thoughts were her guilt of the various assassinations she'd committed coming back to haunt her.) The Wikipedia summary also makes it clear that Tasya wants to rid herself of her personal attachments so that she can throw herself more fully into her work. (I VERY MUCH did not get that impression- the entire film it felt to me like she was trying to hang onto her personal attachments, and it was her employer/handler that was trying to manipulate her into severing those attachments.) There's a point where Tate gains control and stabs himself in the head with a piece of glass, damaging the implant. (I specifically remember wondering if this is what happened, as the following scene seems to imply this, but I remember the shot of the actual stab being so disjointed I thought he stabbed himself in the chest.) At the end of the film when the last few kills take place, the summary asserts that the movie makes it clear that Tasya is in control. (Again, I VERY STRONGLY interpreted this to instead be her losing control, as well as her handler interfering in order to push her in a direction she couldn't go herself.) I'll admit that these events make a LOT more sense and make the story way more cohesive as the summary recounted, but again, I watched the same movie and got a wildly different experience, and from the sounds of it my wife also didn't pick up on these "very clear" intentions either. So are we both just dumb, or is the movie's signaling way more vague than it needed to be?

Confusing narratives aside, there was a lot of very interesting, very evocative imagery in this film. The sequence in the apartment where Tate wrests control from Tasya (when he like... "breaks" her face into the mask seen in the movie's poster) was terrifying, and visceral, and it made my skin crawl. The sequence of the bodies melting as Tasya's consciousness gets transferred into Tate's body was such a perfect encapsulation of the idea of losing one's self and having it replaced with another. The majority of the special effects in this movie were done completely practically, and although it's largely in quick, out-of-focus transitions, there's a ton of creepy body horror stuff hidden in this film (which makes sense, considering it's written and directed by a Cronenberg)!

So I don't know if I'll be watching this movie again anytime soon, but it was enjoyable enough and I would definitely recommend it (though I would also recommend checking out the Wikipedia synopsis right after).

Overall Rating: 7.5/10 Blood Butterflies

The Most Confusing Part(s) of this Movie: Possessor is (apparently) set in "an alternate 2008" according to Wikipedia. I don't understand the purpose of setting the movie twelve years in the past if you're going to also give them futuristic technology? And while we're on the subject of technology, WTF is the purpose of Zoothroo (the company Tasya is sent to take down by possessing Tate, an employee)? I get that the movie says they're a "datamining" company, and they mine data by (apparently) having employees look through people's webcams and catalogue the objects around their room. But they do THAT by having their workers sit at a table, put on a VR headset, and then sit down at a VR computer screen that shows the webcam footage... why not just have the employees sit in front of an actual computer screen? What sort of dystopian 2008 has led humanity to having easier access to VR headsets than computer monitors?