The Possession

''The Possession'' is a 2012 American supernatural horror film directed by Ole Bornedal, written by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, and produced by Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, and J. R. Young. It stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Natasha Calis, Grant Show, Madison Davenport, and Matisyahu. The story, based on the 2004 ''Los Angeles Times'' article "A Jinx in a Box?" by Leslie Gornstein, is about the allegedly haunted dybbuk box.

The film was shot in 2011. Parts of the film were filmed at a former mental institution, Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, British Columbia. Bornedal cited films such as ''The Exorcist'' as an inspiration, praising their subtlety.

It was released in the United States on August 31, 2012, with the film premiering at the Film4 FrightFest and received mixed reviews from film critics, while audience reception has been positive.

Plot

A middle-aged woman stands in her living room looking at an old wooden box with Hebrew writing on it as it whispers and hums a Polish phrase, "Zjem twoje serce", which means "I will eat your heart". (The box is later said to originate from a Jewish Polish village in the 1920s–30s.) The woman prepares to destroy the box with a hammer, but she begins to shake uncontrollably. As she is unable to move, the left side of her face begins to droop and she is knocked to the floor by an unseen attacker, and the force throws her violently around the room. Her son arrives and finds his mother unconscious on the floor.

Basketball coach Clyde Brenek and his wife Stephanie are finishing up their divorce to go their separate ways. Their daughters 10-year-old Emily "Em" and teenage Hannah, help Clyde settle into his new home during the weekend. At a yard sale, Em discovers a box, the same one from the middle-aged woman's living room. While holding the box, Em looks into a window of the woman's home and sees her lying in bed, now wrapped in bandages, and being attended to by a nurse. The woman looks out to see Em holding the box and screams in horror, startling Em. Clyde buys the box for her, and they later find that there seems to be no way to open it. That night, she 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 disturbing, even becoming possessive over the box. At school, she violently attacks a classmate when he takes her box, resulting in a meeting with Clyde, Stephanie, the principal, and her 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 violently throws her out a window, murdering her.

Em tells Clyde about an invisible woman 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, Em gets progressively more upset with the disappearance of the box and accuses Clyde of abusing her. Em flees the house and recovers the box. The voice from the box begins conversing with her in the Polish language, before seemingly possessing her. Stephanie finds out about the abuse accusations and has a judge prevent the children from being with their father.

Clyde takes the box to a university professor who tells him that it is a ''dybbuk box'' that dates back to the 1920s or '30s; it was used to contain a dybbuk, a dislocated spirit as powerful as a demon. Clyde enters Em's room and reads Psalm 91 until a dark but invisible force throws the Tanakh

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases