What I'm Watching: The Possession

Killing some time, and procrastinating, before the next review goes up, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on the recent movie, The Possession.

I heard about the movie, naturally, through trailers.  I was interested in seeing it, but then it fell off my radar.  I was fortunately reminded of its existence before it left the theatres, and got out to see it last week.

Now, as you can probably guess, the story is about, a possession.  We've seen plenty of these stories before.  We know how they go.  And this movie is, quite honestly, no exception.

But, it does star Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  And he's watchabe in almost anything.  The girls cast as his kids are also quite good, and the possessed daughter does an amazing job at times, considering her age and the subject matter.  Almost the entire cast does a great job here.

There's nothing terribly original here, but they give you this very familiar story in a very satisfying, well told, and well made way.

We've been here before, but we always like to hear the classics if they're good stories, and done by great storytellers.  Sam Raimi may not have directed this, or wrote it, but he was involved as a producer, and he must have had enough of an influence.

I said in my review of Drag Me to Hell that he is an expert at storytelling and pacing of horror movies, and you get that same sense here.  It's less effective, not quite as refined, but there is a definite sense that they knew just how to get you going at times.  Not as much as if Raimi was running the show, but they get enough right.

My biggest surprise was to actually have the movie NOT go where I feared it would go, where too many movies go, with the ambiguous ending.  It does still kinda go that way, but not in quite so obvious a way as Insidious.  They easily could have ended this movie at a certain point, and it would have been like so many other movies.  But at least the family gets a happy ending, and still have the evil left out in the world.  That is a delicate balance to strive for, and they managed to pull it off.

You could do a lot worse than watching this movie.  I can't complain at all about a well-told story that is perfectly entertaining for 90 minutes.  It may not blow your mind, it may not reinvent the genre, but it tells a solid story in a good way.  A definite recommendation.

J