Possession
Tags: avant garde, murder, allegory, cult, violence, insanity, psychedelic, philosophical, romantic

Plot synopsis:
A newly separated couple Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick) live in different homes. After Clyde picks up their two children, Emily "Em" (Natasha Calis) and Hannah (Madison Davenport), for the weekend, they stop at a yard sale where Em becomes intrigued by an old wooden box that has Hebrew letters engraved on it. Clyde buys the box for Em, and they later find that there seems no way to open it. That night, Em hears whispering coming from the box. She is able to open it, and finds a tooth, a dead moth, a wooden figurine, and a ring, which she begins to wear. Em becomes solitary, and her behavior becomes increasingly sinister; she stabs her father in the hand with a fork during breakfast. That night, the house, especially Em's bedroom, becomes infested with moths.
At school, Em violently attacks a classmate when he takes her box, resulting in a meeting with Clyde, Stephanie, the principal and the teacher. Em's teacher recommends that she spend time away from the box, so it is left in the classroom. That night, curious about the mysterious noises from the box, the teacher tries to open it, but a malevolent force, the dybbuk, murders her by violently throwing her out a window. Em tells Clyde about an invisible hag who lives in her box who says that Em is "special". Alarmed by her behavior, Clyde attempts to dispose of the box. During their next weekend at Clyde's, Emily gets progressively more upset with the disappearance of the box. She begins yelling at Clyde in the hall with Hannah watching in the back. The dybbuk seems to slap Em across the face. She begins yelling, asking why he's hitting her, from Hannah's perspective it looks like her father actually does. Em flees the house, recovers the box and the dybbuk begins conversing with her in a strange language.
Clyde takes the box to a university professor who tells him that it is a dybbuk box that dates back to the 1920s; it was used to contain a dybbuk, a dislocated spirit as powerful as a devil. Clyde enters Em's room and reads Psalm 91; a dark but invisible force throws the Tanakh across the room. Clyde then travels to a Hasidic community in Brooklyn and learns from a Jewish priest named Tzadok (Matisyahu) that the possession has three main stages; in the third stage, the dybbuk latches onto its human host, becoming one entity with it. The only way to defeat the dybbuk is to lock it back inside the box via a forced ritual. Upon further examination on the box, Tzadok learns that the dybbuk's name is "Abyzou", or the "Taker of Children".
Em has a seizure and is taken to the hospital for an MRI. During the procedure, Stephanie and Hannah are horrified when they see the dybbuk's face in the MRI scans next to Em's heart. Clyde and Tzadok join the family at the hospital and attempt to conduct an exorcism. Where Em is taken to a room that has a tub full of water and a stretcher to keep Em stable during the exorcism. During the exorcism, the possessed Em attacks Tzadok. Clyde grabs Em from him, and Em runs out of the room. Clyde follows her out and finally finds her in the morgue where the lights are off. As he nears her, she starts to attack him. Clyde survives the attack, but the dybbuk is passed from Em to him. Tzadok performs a successful exorcism; Abyzou emerges from Clyde and crawls back into the box. The family is reunited, with Clyde and Stephanie's love rekindled. Tzadok drives away with the box in Clyde's vehicle. The car is hit by a truck, killing him. The box lands safely from the wreckage, and Abyzou's whispering is heard from it, the same Polish rhyme heard at the beginning of the film.

Review: I'm not very good at plot synopsis, and I very rarely write reviews, but this film could quite possibly be a distant cousin to David Lynchs 'Eraserhead', in that it involves a marriage gone wrong, a (perhaps) mutant baby, infidelity, and so much more that is felt emotionally rather than explained and read into.It contains the most OTT, eccentric, and brilliant performances I've ever seen, and you can't say that about many films, where the performances are unique and different.
I'm unfamiliar with the directors other work but if its even half as good as this I'll order everything I can get of his.Recommended to any open minded individual who likes films that draw attention to themselves with an utter sense of uniqueness..
I don't know what Zulawski is trying to say through the film about his own divorce from wife and country and political system, like Eraserhead it's something so personal that it pierces through bottoms of the soul to come out at the other end and speak for things that touch all of us.Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani see their marriage come crashing down and the film is not merely the death and burial but the wake before and the mourning after.
I don't like how Zulawski uses Isabelle Adjani to play different characters very calculated to be different sides of the same person, but then again I don't like movies that do that, it's like a very easy way to a quick symbolism (Ashes of Time, another film I saw recently, does that too).
It happens in that part of the city where other movies don't know how to go, the streets are different, the buildings and apartments look curiously different, and when an apartment catches on fire, there's a strange old woman down in the street corner yelling things about God ("giving the light clear, getting it back dirty") and cackling maniacally as though an end to the world is very close at hand.Both Sam Neil and Isabelle Adjani give performances of a lifetime.
Beautiful, erotic and extremely disturbing, Andrjez Zulawski's film (admired by the Italian Master of the Macabre himself, Dario Argento) is an extreme assault upon the senses.Mark (played excellently and deliberately over-the-top by Sam Neil) returns home from secret government work to his wife in Berlin, cue many shots of the Berlin wall representing the couple's marital breakdown.
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 ...
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.
Additionally, Heinz Bennent's Heinrich is a wonderful and whimsical character, bringing an element of farcical comedy to the plot.Managing to shock and surprise as well as stupefy, Possession is a film well versed in oddity.
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?
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...
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.
A marriage can't slowly disintegrate if it never happened.And it's disappointing, because I really like Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, and rate them both as actors.
The over-the-top acting, goofy choreography, elaborate camera moves for inconsequential moments, closeups so tight they managed to make even Isabelle Adjani look bad, soundtrack that's completely ripped off from "The Godfather." There were quite a few laugh-out-loud moments that I'm certain weren't meant that way.Perhaps the filmmaker meant it as purely art, and it's raw emotion splattered on the screen.
Audiences are by and large uncomfortable with this type of thing, but luckily I've seen a lot of experimental/unusual cinema, so I'm acclimated to it.Isabelle Adjani is glorious in a dual role (which is a reversal of the Bunuel mindgame from 'That Obscure Object of Desire'--Instead of two actresses playing a single character, there is a single actress playing two characters.)Adjani and Sam Neill's enacting of a horribly troubled marriage is spectacular.
This sets Mark on his own course of mental illness and Neill does a good job of portraying anxiety and depression.Isabelle Adjani as Marks wife Anna is, for the most part, brilliant at portraying her character's breakdown.
The only realistic anchors in the film are the secondary characters, such as Heinrich's mother played with feeling by Johanna Hofer and Anna's friend Margit Carstensen portrayed by Margit Gluckmeister.Having said that, Zulawski does an impressive job of creating an unease through all the insanity.
Isabelle Adjani is hysterical in almost every scene and Sam Neill, who I have always thought of as a great actor, gives the worst performance I have ever seen from him.
I get the concept that you change as a person and that who you are is destroyed, but when you mix in a ridiculous plot, shoot outs and detectives you have gone in the wrong direction.I know this film has gotten a lot of fans over the years and that it will most likely remain a classic for decades to come.
The inclusion of Andrzej Zulawski's Possession on the official video nasties list during the 80s (thanks to a couple of scenes involving goop, blood, mucous, and Isabelle Adjani) has forever guaranteed that it will be of interest to avid horror fans; a shame, because if any of the 72 titles deemed unsuitable for public viewing by the BBFC actually deserved to be wiped from our collective memory, its this piece of highly pretentious, extremely irritating, and very tiresome art-house dreck.Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani play a married couple whose relationship is in tatters, Adjani having found herself a new lover or two, one of which is a slimy, many tentacled monster born of her id (or some such existential claptrap).
But while Possession may be a very personal piece for Zulawski, a cathartic movie that helped him to come to terms with his political and marital issues, I found it nothing but an utter bore from start to finish..
After finding this on a "Top 10 Body Horror Films" list, I decided to give this movie a go, based on the scant few images I managed to find online.The general idea is about a married man who is having problems with a unfaithful wife, who appears to be slowly going more and more insane as the film goes on.
The plot is a little difficult to follow but makes more sense if you track down the full 2 hour version.Contextually similar to Cronenberg's The Brood (1979) the lead female character (Adjani) gives birth to her sexual frustration in the form of a multi-phallic squid-like creature.
She appears to find comfort in this monster as her marriage to Marc (Sam Neill) bitterly degenerates.We also learn that Anna is cheating on Marc and as she becomes increasingly disturbed both the men in her life turn on each other in a desperate attempt to understand her behaviour.Skillfully directed and masterfully acted this parable on relationships rivals Jean-Jacques Beineix's 'Betty Blue' in psychotic spontaneity.
Naturally, he deduces that the ending of their relationship is down to another man; and he's not wrong - but things take a turn for the sinister when she leaves her lover for...something else.The style of the movie is superb throughout, as director Andrzej Zulawski manages to create an atmosphere that is sexy, surreal and bubbling with mystery.
The special effects are brilliant and never go over the top; the director's use of what can only be described as a 'monster' being especially well done, and on the whole; Possession is a movie that everyone should give the time of day to.
It's unquestionably a horror film and allegory, fulfilling the promise of its title.I do believe, watching it for the first time on Turner Classics the other night, it captures quintessentially Grotowski influenced acting performances, at a time period when there was the greatest awareness of his discipline and art coming out of Poland.
Unforgettable, maybe seen as OTT by some, but nonetheless true within their weirdness are they, possibly the best of the long careers of Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani.The topping on the cake is the on-screen work of the amazing German actor who passed away in October, Heinz Bennent playing the boyfriend, Heinrich; who is most interesting to watch, and one of the reasons the film is a not-to-be-missed.To not enjoy this film on all its levels, including its dark humor, is to deny yourself one of the great experiences in cinema.
It was actually included on the DPP's list of 'Video Nasties' in the UK in the early eighties.The story involves a man named Mark (Sam Neill) who arrives home after being away on his mysterious job (possibly a government secret agent) and is told by his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) that she is having an affair with another man named Heinrich (Heinz Bennent).
The film then goes into a convoluted mode of visceral frenzy.Isabelle Adjani gives an extremely powerful performance as the crazed wife, (think of Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant, and then some more) in one scene in particular in a subway she is irrationally wild.
It takes a turn for the ultra-weird when he finally realizes that there is much more to the plot than just the average cheating housewife scenario.This features some of the most non-stop, emotionally charged performances ever by Neill and Adjani, and other odd-ball characters are introduced into the mix as well, coming off so eccentric that one can only determine that this was filmed as some strange, artistic freak-show of some sort.
It was a roller-coaster of great and stupid scenes, of hysterical acting and amazing acting and a script that mingled together divorce drama and Lovecraftian body horror and zen thinking and symbolism so heavy that I couldn't possibly enjoy it.Keep in mind that this is a performance that brought Adjani a Cannes best actress award, which is totally deserved.
If you are a great artist, express yourself so that people can understand.Bottom line: a weird melange of genres that ultimately felt like a masturbatory work for the writer and director of the film.
It is the fact that on some level, you are aware it is following a story, that makes what you are experiencing all the more insane.The story is pretty much a precursor to the Lars Von Trier film "Antichrist", the main differences being that in the case of "Possession" it is not grief over a lost child that is destroying the couple's relationship, and that "Possession" is the better, if more messed-up piece (seriously!) Mark returns home in the knowledge that there is something wrong with his wife Anna, and it quickly becomes apparent to him that she is unhappy with their marriage and that she has taken a lover.
Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani are really great, and I think that a good movie does not have to be completely clear, because it allows you to think a lot, (I might mention Mulholland Drive as an example) and thats what happens with Possession.
And the fact that her sexual desire turns into a creature that later transforms into a copy of her husband makes this a movie incredable.But what made this movie disturbing outside of the film itself is the director commentary on the DVD where this man tells the story of how he made this movie and the inspiration for it.When him and his love at the time broke up (never understood what it was over) he himself began a his spiral into his interdemon.
The editing is extremely bad and annoying, it is nowhere near as gory as people make it out to be, the acting is suprisingly bad especially from Sam Neil and even Isabelle Adjani who i like, it dragged on and tried to create an arty feel to it but failed miserably.
Anna (Isabelle Adjani) leaves her house, her husband Mark (Sam Neil), her son and her lover, to live with a strange creature in an old building.
I'm glad I watched it even if I wasn't as crazy about it during the viewing.The actors go for broke (beginning with a great restaurant scene) but after a while the film began to feel one note for me until I started to numb to Adjani's impressive histrionics.
The horror of this movie is in the watching these actors screach throughout the film.
Possession (1981) ** (out of 4) Andrzej Zulawski's incredibly bizarre film centers on a husband (Sam Neill) returning home from a spy job and learning that his wife (Isabelle Adjani) is leaving him for another man.
I'm not exactly sure what the film was about and I'd say that everyone watching it will have their own feelings on the matter but I do think the director was trying to show the mental breakdown of a marriage gone wrong.
It is a movie that plays on many levels and provokes the viewer to think about what is happening.the perfomances are top notch Isabelle Adjanni has such fluid motion, her scene of possession in the subway passage is almost like a ballet.Sam Neill is also excellent as the husband posessed by love for his wife.
I don't know why Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill agreed to act in this movie, it must have been because they were young and didn't know any better, or because at their debut they didn't have much choice and couldn't refuse a role in a big picture.
Not that Isabelle Adjani isn't a good actress but she had way better movies where she could have won awards.
I agree, Sam Neil and Isabelle Adjani gave performances of a lifetime but it is not enough to make a movie good.
I didn't bother to read any other comments posted on this film because I just knew there would be nothing but very judgemental people saying how much they hated it.I do admit the film is very badly edited with lots of scenes beginning but not actually leading anywhere and almost 90% of the happenings in it are completely unexplained,like a particularly confusing scene where Neil wakes up with a beard that he didn't have previously and when he asks someone how long he was asleep for she replies "3 weeks"and the fact that it is never explained why/when/how Adjani was even possessed in the first place,nor is it seen.There are many other things that make as little sense as this and one woman-a teacher that looks identical to Neil's wife-who simply disappears from the story altogether.But apart from all these things,the film is absoloutly terrifying.The director achieves this with very dark,deeply troubled characters,all of whom are a little crazy,very dark,spooky sets,in particular Adjani's apartment where the creature lives,completely isolated streets in outside sequences and Adjani's standout performance as the disturbed wife.Definately the most terrifying movie I have ever seen,so it's a shame the version that actually makes sense is so rare..
Mark (Sam Neill) returns to his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) in Berlin and finds things have changed.
The film begins as Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna's (Isabelle Adjani) marriage is deteriorating.
I will give a huge applaud to Zulawskis impeccable directing, Adjani and Neill acting their hearts and souls out (they practically become their characters, it's almost like they stop acting and just become their roles, it's that good!) And the soundtrack that gives the movie that eerie feeling.
Mark (Sam Neill) returns home in Berlin from a business trip and his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) is falling apart.