{"id":4298,"date":"2012-08-31T13:36:57","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T19:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=4298"},"modified":"2012-08-31T13:36:57","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T19:36:57","slug":"the-possession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=4298","title":{"rendered":"The Possession"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Moody and a little slow, with muted colors and a half-empty, alien-feeling suburban setting, Danish director Ole Bornedal\u2019s \u201cThe Possession\u201d is a nifty end-of-summer gift for horror buffs. (Understandably, the promotional campaign for this movie has emphasized producer Sam Raimi, but he didn\u2019t write it or direct it, and it never feels much like his work.) This is a lugubrious, lovingly crafted B movie, with more than a little 1970s flavor but no arch postmodern attitude. Is it great cinema, or even a picture you\u2019ll remember clearly this time next year? Maybe not, but \u201cThe Possession\u201d is beautifully photographed and well cast, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick as a depressed, divorced couple whose younger daughter meets a most unwelcome new friend. Furthermore, it delivers its shocks masterfully and without overkill, and offers a new twist on the familiar exorcism formula.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to claim that there\u2019s never been a Jewish-themed demonic-possession movie before, since that\u2019s probably not true \u2014 every arcane corner of human religious and spiritual belief has been plumbed by horror screenwriters at some point. (In fact, I dimly recollect a Judeo-centric parody of \u201cThe Exorcist,\u201d released on LP, that my big brother owned. Anyone?) Here, writers Juliet Snowden and Stiles White take the genuine concept of the \u201cDybbuk box,\u201d demonic containers made of ornamented wood sometimes found in the 18th- and 19th-century shtetls of Eastern Europe, and run with it. More interesting still is Bornedal\u2019s portrayal of the Hasidic community in Brooklyn\u2019s Borough Park neighborhood, where Morgan\u2019s stricken dad finally finds a rabbi\u2019s renegade son \u2013 played by Matisyahu, the ex-Hasid alt-rock artist \u2013 to help cast out the evil one.<\/p>\n

By the time Em (Natasha Calis), a girl of 9 or 10, picks out the odd-looking box at a suburban garage sale, we already know it\u2019s extremely bad news, thanks to an actual 1970s prologue sequence. We also know that Em and her older sister Hannah (Madison Davenport) are suffering through their parents\u2019 dreary divorce, which has exiled Clyde (Morgan), their shaggy basketball-coach dad, to a brand-new house in a distant outer suburb and led their thin-lipped mother, Stephanie (Sedgwick), to shack up with an irritatingly cheerful orthodontist (Grant Show). I have the feeling that I\u2019ve seen the orthodontist-as-inadequate-stepfather gag played out before, in other divorce movies, but it still works. I apologize in advance to all those who practice this noble and helpful profession, but doesn\u2019t the very idea \u2013 \u201cMom\u2019s dating a guy who puts braces on kids\u2019 teeth!\u201d \u2013 conjure up your inner sixth-grader? (Wait till you see what the imprisoned Dybbuk has in store for him!)