Possession (1981) – Film Review

Director: Andrzej Zulawski
Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen
Certificate:

By Sarah Morgan

Prepare to have your mind blown – Andrzej Zulawski’s psychological horror isn’t quite like anything you’ve ever witnessed before.

It starts out as a domestic drama, with Sam Neill as Mark, a clean-cut espionage agent who returns to his West Berlin home following the successful completion of his latest assignment to find that this wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) has been seeing another man, Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), and wants a divorce.

Anna leaves their apartment and hands over custody of their young son Bob to Mark, who is completely bewildered by this turn of events. He eventually grows increasingly worried about his estranged wife – the separation seems to bring on a breakdown of sorts, during which she self-harms and sets herself up in a rundown flat across the city.

“Disturbing”

Heinrich is baffled by her behaviour too, while Mark is disturbed by the appearance of Bob’s teacher, who is Anna’s doppelganger. He also hires private detectives to find her, which is where the horror aspect comes in – they discover, to their cost, that she is sharing her home with a creature that looks as if it was manifested during a particularly feverish dream by HP Lovecraft (the physical monster itself was created by special effects genius Carlo Rambaldi, whose CV also includes Alien and ET).

There are echoes of David Lynch here thanks to the twisted approach to family life, as well as the body horror of David Cronenberg, and yet Polish writer-director Zulawski’s film remains utterly unique, not to mention completely disturbing, puzzling and thought-provoking.

Neill, who seemed to be on the verge of becoming a genre icon at the time, having made Omen III: The Final Conflict and Possession back-to-back, is a typically strong presence as Mark, playing the role in a strong yet low-key fashion.

“Incredible”

Whether that was intentional or not is unknown, but as Adjani’s is the film’s ‘showier’ (for want of a better word) character, it’s a welcome approach. She is incredible as Anna, a woman clearly undergoing some kind of terrifying psychological trauma. The actress later admitted she had found shooting the film gruelling, and rumours persist that at one stage, she attempted to take her own life.

Possession is certainly not for the faint-hearted, and it’s not easily forgotten.

Sarah Morgan( Writer )

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

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