Indie Horror Hall of Fame: POSSESSOR
Do you want this?
It’s been a little over five years since Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor changed my cinematic DNA, and I decided recently to give it a rewatch just to see if it still packs the same punch. Somehow, it hit me even harder this time around.
Provocative and visceral in equal measure, I think that Possessor is easily one of the most intriguing films to be released thus far in the 2020s and could be considered one of the greatest to boot. Cronenberg’s body horror/sci-fi mash-up provides us with a myriad of thematic elements that permeate the Canadian filmmaker’s deeply nuanced narrative of his boundary-pushing second feature, with Brandon daring to pose some rather bold questions throughout the film.
What does it mean to be human? How has technology transformed our identities, and do we even recognize ourselves in the wake of our technological obsessions anymore? What are we willing to sacrifice in service of the expectations of society at large?
The world of Possessor revolves around a secretive organization that employs contract killers to inhabit the subconscious of others so that they can execute their targets. One of the best in the assassination game is Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), whose methodical approach to her unconventional job has made her success unparalleled. In the film’s opening sequence, we follow hostess Holly Bergman (Gabrielle Graham) who is being manipulated by Tasya as she heads into what should be another normal night working at the Blue Night Sky Lounge. Tasya has one job that night – to shoot and kill a lawyer named Elio (Matthew Garland) – and then kill Holly via suicide. But nothing goes to plan as Tasya decides to violently stab Elio to death instead (she wounds him nearly 20 times with a steak knife), and after she hesitates in destroying Holly, the agent awaits the arrival of the police on the scene who will surely do the job for her instead.
