Review: "Possessor" is a true provocation
Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 10:45AM by Tony Ruggio
A worm-infested apple doesn’t fall far from a rotting tree. In only his second feature film, baby Brandon Cronenberg proves he’s everything his father David was in his heyday: stylish, provocative, and interested in more than the gore and sleazy depravity that often grab headlines, although he’s clearly interested in those as well. Set in an alternate techno-horror 2008 of corporate espionage, where agents like Tasya (Andrea Riseborough) use brain-implant technology to “possess” other human beings for carrying out assassinations, Possessor is possibly the most graphic film made since Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. Here it’s not so much what happens, but how it happens, how it’s framed on screen via some truly horrific and terrific practical effects.
When we meet Tasya, she’s at the top of her game yet beginning to slip. As Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character puts it, “the older you get, the harder it gets”...