The Possession (2012)

hyped garbage

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Best movie ever!

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

First off, let me say, this movie is a 7/10. I only rated it 10/10 to even out the unfair grade it currently has (5.9/10).I watch a lot of movies, of all genres and ages. I have watched hundreds of horror films, and generally like possession/haunting ones the most. This movie is far better than average, and decently entertaining. Not super scary; but by-far scarier than a lot of other movies classified as horror.Watch the movie, it's far better than what people here are giving it credit for.

After The Exorcist, I find movies about possession to be unoriginal and tedious, and this one was no different.Add to it a very annoying character - the mother of the possessed girl, played by Kyra Sedgwick complete with the bitchy ex-wife thing going full speed, made me start walking away from the screen before the film was half over.But if you like this kind of thing, go for it. It's well produced and acted, with some minor gross-outs to keep it interesting. But it's mediocre to the end.

THE POSSESSION is yet another vanilla-flavoured American version of a Japanese ghost film. This one's not a remake for a change, but the similarities and scare sequences appear to have been liberally borrowed from the likes of THE GRUDGE remake and others besides. Unsurprisingly, Sam Raimi's production company Ghost House Pictures is behind this, producers of THE GRUDGE and its sequels.This time around, the plot revolves around an old box that might just have a demon hiding inside it. The box comes into the possession of a young girl and the rest of the film is a knock off of THE EXORCIST and all the other demonic possession type films you can think of. There are a few startling scenes here, but for most of the running time THE POSSESSION is a bland, predictable bore, shoehorned into a PG-13 rating.Danish director Ole Bornedal was once acclaimed for his thriller NIGHTWATCH but nowadays seems to be treading water. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was so memorable in WATCHMEN but his nice guy fatherly hero type is bland beyond belief, and the less said about Kyra Sedgwick the better. The child actors appear to think screaming and screeching all the while amounts to realistic acting, whereas in reality it's just annoying. THE POSSESSION is Hollywood film-making at its blandest.

The Possession has done only one thing well: it follows the formula of "Look at that piece of possibly cursed box of questionable origin, there's no way it has some demonic entity that will make my life miserable". Everything plays out predictably, there are no surprises or twists, and the worst of all, it's not even scary. The movie is just annoyingly loud and poorly edited, I'd advise you use your money to watch the kiddie CG movies instead, they won't suck as much as this.Look at the poster above, you'll be seeing some people puke moths, hands and even a Gollum. This trick is done so many times, it loses any suspense and resembles more of an eating disorder. Plot has a bit of value in the beginning as the family is in post-divorce aftermath, their relationships been fractured and set for harder situation to come. The sisters are good addition, since they look identical which might show how both of them cope with the possession, respectively. Instead, you'll be bombarded with series of gibberish that comes of that bloody box, things being broken in maximum volume and someone is always screaming.I get the necessary blast of volume in horror movies, but this is just ridiculous in every levels, as if they are saying "HEY, IT'S SCARY! LOOK, SO SCARY!" every five minutes. At some point, I prepare myself for the next attempt of blowing my ear drums off, it's not even unintentionally funny anymore. There's also telekinesis parts where people are seemingly break dancing or doing lousy acrobatic while the soundtrack is trying so hard to hum unpleasant effect to convince the audience. Play dubstep remix instead and you have a hip hop dance video.It's also unfortunate that the movie's editing is sometimes choppy, it could use more time to emphasis some scenes further and establish more ground for the build the next fright, instead they dwell longer on the divorce issue. It's a good concept for background, but it gets stale and offers only more excuses for people screaming at each other. It doesn't help that it uses every-so-cliché flashing lights, coupled that with the blaring audio, it's a torment to your senses.If you like girl throwing tantrum because their parents are separated, seeing her gorging food to make herself obese and watching the parents watch Youtube videos with cinematic overly loud volume, still don't watch this. I honestly can't find any reason to recommend it, I actually would give it lower score if not for the "Based on true story" remark, because I don't want to mess with the creepy Dybbuk.