A Short review of Possession (1981)

Possesion is a drama and horror movie directed by Andrzej Zulawski, starring Sam Neill (better known as Alan Grant from "Jurassic Park") and Isabelle Adjani as the main characters. 

Synopsis

Here they play a couple that reunites after Mark (Sam Neill) comes back home after a spy mission. Unfortunately for him, his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) wants the divorce. Later she confesses being an extramarital affair the cause of this. Everything turns darker after Mark discovers something more sinister going on with Anna. 

My review (spoilers)

Saying that this movie is weird would be an understatement. Everyone acts really strange and even their way os speaking makes no real sense at times. However, this doesn't make this a bad film, it actually matches the tone of it all and sells you the idea that under these normal looking people there's something wrong  going on. 

The characters, even though there are few, feel all different from one another. We don't get to know profundly ech one of them, since a good part of the film is from the perspective of Mark or Anna. Isabelle Adjani makes a fantastic Anna in this picture, she gives her the right amount of insanity and humanity for us to belive what is going on and still be sympathetic of her character. Sam Neill also delivers in his way of portraying his character's slow descent into madness and his increasing paranoia. 

Now, THE SUBWAY/UNDERGROUND SCENE, I had this scene spoiled to me before watching the movie. Eventhough I knew what was coming along, the scene was insanely impressive, I couldn't close my mouth during the whole runtime of it. Isabelle Adjani delivers such an intense and visceral performance you can't keep your eyes from the sreen. (She's so real for this). 

The practical effects hold up really well, they made me sick from time to time, specially those red (blood?) and white (I don't even wanna know what that was) fluids suppurating from Anna and the creature. The cinematography has some pretty desaturated colors, but i love that for this movie, it goes with the coldness between Anna and Mark. 

I have to admit I didn't understand what the ending was suppossed to bee at first, I had to look it up. Apparently it's all a metaphor for divorce. 

I'll let user @parafffin5 from FilmAffinity explain it:

"The movie is an allegory for divorce. The "monster" is actually the product of Adjani's internal guilt, shame and deep sexual desires that have been physically manifested into the external reality. The monster evolves into a replicate of her husband - her idealized husband. Adjani's own doppelganger appears in the form of her lookalike - the school teacher Helen, who is the idealized wife, in Sam Neill's eyes.

At the end, when the monster goes back to the house (After Adjani and Neill are killed) the boy begs Helen not to open the door and then promptly drowns himself in the bathtub - the "idealized" husband and wife are reuniting but the boy senses that it is a doomed marriage, as he already knows the troubles of his family life. That is the symbolic meaning behind the whole world ending at the film's end: they are a dysfunctional family unit destined to end destructively. Nothing in this film is literal. Like I said, it is an allegory.

The film was in part based on director Zulawski's own ruined marriage and the film on some level explores the devastating effects of divorce and the stress upon the children involved. It isn't really much of a "horror" film in the classic sense as it is a psychological drama."

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

- Amanita