Possession (1981)

• Year: 1981
• Released: 28 Oct 1983
• Country: France, West Germany
• Adwords: 5 wins & 4 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082933/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/possession
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/possession
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, French, German
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Drama, Horror
• Runtime: 124 min
• Writer: Andrzej Zulawski, Frederic Tuten
• Director: Andrzej Zulawski
• Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen
• Keywords: murder, serial killer, police, monster, investigation,

	7.3/10
	75/100
	64% – Critics
	58% – Audience

Possession Storyline

During a secretive business trip away, Mark learns that his wife Anna is growing restless in what he believed was their happy marriage. Upon his return home, he learns from her that she wants a divorce. They both go through a series of different emotions related to their situation, Mark’s which is generally obsessive about learning why Anna, who he still loves, wants the divorce, and Anna’s which is generally increasingly histrionic in getting away from Mark. Caught in the middle is their infant son Bob, who Mark uses as a gage to Anna’s mental state. Anna states that her want for the divorce is not because of another man, but Mark finds out that Anna has a lover named Heinrich. In the meantime, Mark also meets Bob’s teacher Helen, who looks exactly like Anna, but is her polar opposite in temperament. Starting a relationship with Helen lessens his obsession with Anna. But as Mark and Anna’s encounters together reach more emotional and violent levels, Mark, with help of a private investigative firm, learns that Anna’s love life is not all that it appears. Anna’s true obsession has a somewhat gruesome process and nothing will stop her from reaching her end goal.

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Possession Movie Reviews

She’s the maker of her own evil

Surely other Zulawski movies like “La femme publique” and “L’important c’est d’aimer” have dark, disturbing moments, too, but “Possession” must be the most terrifying of them all. It all begins perfectly normal, like something that could happen every day, anywhere in your neighborhood: Anna (Adjani) leaves Mark (Sam Neill), she confesses she found a new lover already a year ago, and then the breaking up of their marriage naturally affects their little son, too. “I’m the maker of my own evil”, Anna says once, and the evil she creates is visualized literally as a slimy demon, whereas Mark “creates” a school teacher looking exactly like Anna (and also played by Adjani), a woman so pure and innocent they go to bed together without having sex, and of course the idealized woman immediately takes care of his son … and the dish washing ;-). The torment and hysteria of destroyed love is perfectly set in a Berlin before reunification, with the wall appearing countless times in the frame: an obvious symbol that divides what used to belong together, just like the characters in the movie. The “possessed” Adjani delivers an unforgettable performance, but if you are going to watch this, be prepared for more blood and guts than in “The Exorcist”.

“God is in me”

It’s staggering to come up against a filmmaker who has a truly mad vision to put onto celluloid. If it’s really believable and the maker isn’t just putting on the audience it can take us into that madness. Possession is a film that is like it’s title, taken with it’s own sense of grandeur, starting off as a Scenes-from-a-Marriage-esque tale of downfall – with more ZAP and wildness in the fights the married couple have – but with something just not quite right. These scenes feel raw and uninhibited, by the actors and by the material, which goes to such extremes of how much they hurt one another that it becomes perversely funny.

Why all the camera movement in this film, especially early on, where it turns into Vittorio Storaro Time with a Red Bull chaser? From the sensibility of the high emotions and hysteria on display, why not? If your material is going all out, then you might as well go all out with it. Isabelle Adjani really, REALLY goes to town here, forgetting that there’s such a thing as ‘chewing scenery’ and just stampeding through it at times, with Sam Neill and the camera operator being breathless to keep up. It’s a film that moves with real force and energy… sometimes maybe TOO much force and energy.

For a film like possession, excess is not something that can be kept back, but what is so fascinating is that it’s so intense at times, in the husband/wife interactions, the emotional violence springing out into physical abuse (at one point a slap is then encouraged into more, an uncomfortable scene done just right), that it’s fascinating because it’s going into such high volume. And as a horror film, a true horror film of the soul where it’s laid bare and stripped out by a demon and f***ed with a spiky tail or something, it’s bewildering, mind-boggling, and a dark pile of fun.

A lot of it is the performances – Adjani worked her ass off to get that Cannes best actress win, and though there are times I can’t understand her (not sure if it’s the accent or the lines, like her ‘fate and chance’ monologue) and runs the gamut as a character who starts out flawed and damaged and gets so turned-inside-out she makes Linda Blair in the Exorcist look like a… girl. And Sam Neill has a kind of strange appeal here – at times he talks like he doesn’t take these lines seriously, or is doing so SO much that it just becomes funny, and other times he is genuinely power-punching with his dramatic touch. In a scene like the restaurant fight he goes between both levels.

But why I may, someday, after I can get over the experience, would return to Possession is that among the f***ing-insane style of films out there, there’s nothing else quite like it. It revels in bringing the audience into its horror set-pieces, especially with that creature in the apartment as ambiguous a demon as the baby in Eraserhead, and the dread in every man going into that apartment harder to bear than the one before. And there is genuine pain, I think, in the filmmaking. I don’t know the history behind the film’s gestation but I’d wager the director had a bad marriage and expressed it, literally and metaphorically, with a tale of an unfaithful woman brought to madness by a demon… or maybe that’s it.

Possession doesn’t spoon-feed at any point in time. On the contrary, and maybe this is a flaw I think, there’s so little explanation of anything in the film that by the last fifteen minutes as Sam Neill’s character goes ape-s**t and the husband/wife’s child just gives up. It got to the point where I had my hands up in a ‘what the hell!?’ position sitting in my seat in the theater. Perhaps another viewing would solve some of my quandaries, or just make new ones. Whatever the case, the mood of this film is chilling and harrowing, and for those who like their dolly shots, this is a must-must-MUST see. Oh, and by the way, the creature effects – by the guy that did E.T.(!)

Bizarre and brilliant

One of the hands-down most bizarre movies you’ll see in your entire life, Andrzej Zulawski’s POSSESSION is a remarkable film that resists efforts to pigeonhole it into a genre. Is it a film about marriage breakdown, a la the great European art-house directors of old? Is it a slimy, slithery outer-space horror flick? Is it a crime flick, like the ’70s Italian police movies, with private eyes, motorbike chases, and stunts? Or is it a character study of madness and self-hatred, a la Polanski’s REPULSION? The answer is none of these and all of them. POSSESSION is a one of a film and a guaranteed love-it or hate-it experience.

For what it’s worth, I thought it was a really good film, even if it was once of those efforts that make you feel uncomfortable and, in a way, leave you wishing you’d never seen it (I felt the same about THE EXORCIST). Sometimes horror can be just too effective. The marriage disintegration scenes were the worst part of the film for me. Zulawski has his actors shout and scream their way through scene after scene, almost brawling in some instances, hitting and cutting each other and trashing their apartment. Don’t expect subtlety here – characters have sudden mood swings and can transform from caring lovers to violent psychopaths in a split second. Isabelle Adjani carries the film, and I actually find her the most frightening thing on screen: her blank stare and icy demeanour give her an almost alien look. You end up really convinced that SHE is mad, so it may be one of the best performances out there.

Sam Neill fares less role in a kind of up-and-down role, in the same year that he made his name in OMEN III: THE FINAL CONFLICT. Is he the hero? Is he the villain? Again, he’s both and neither, and while I do like this actor a lot, some of his overacting is a little embarrassing. For his worth, though, Zulawski has assembled a great supporting cast of bit players and weirdos, with the highlight being Heinz Bennent’s bisexual druggie. This man should have had an Oscar for the creepy character he plays here! One of the main characters in the film is a rarely-seen monster, a weird tentacled squid man animated by great effects from technician Carlo Rombaldi. This is a fantastic creation, even better as we only see it in a handful of moments, and once again Rombaldi has surpassed himself, here at the very highlight of his career.

Where to begin with the rest of the movie? Some of it is nasty, with Adjani committing bloody murders and detectives lurking around; it feels like a giallo, something Argento would make, perhaps. The ending throws in some superbly-shot action scenes which come as a nice pay-off for the slow build-up. The climax has an evil doppelganger that reminded me of the alien in PREY. Other parts are just unnecessary – the subway miscarriage is way overdone and completely icky. No wonder this film became a ‘video nasty’ in Britain for a little while. The film has lots of odd undercurrents and there are even some comic bits. Homosexuality is a running theme, as is parenthood. The ending, with its sounds of bombs dropping, leaves the reader to make their own mind up about just what on earth is going on. I can’t define POSSESSION, and I can’t begin to describe it, but it scared and disturbed me which meant it worked as a horror flick.