Film Review: Possessor
Brandon Cronenberg comes into his own with the grisly, mind-bending Possessor
A psychedelic cocktail of gruesome violence and cerebral sci-fi, Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor pushes the boundaries of the body horror genre pioneered by his father. For his sophomore feature, Cronenberg crafts a tech-fueled nightmare sprung from his perverse vision, utilizing the dueling talents of Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbot to deliver a twisted, body-swapping experience unlike any other. Minor spoilers ahead…
There are no safe spaces within the blood-splattered walls of Possessor. Director Brandon Cronenberg’s second feature after 2012’s Antiviral is a viscera-spilling, eye-gouging narrative designed to flay both mind and body under the guise of a sci-fi espionage thriller. A deadly serious Freaky Friday high on bath salts and tilted towards ultra-violence, the film takes the body-swap conceit to demented new heights. Like Antiviral before it, Cronenberg’s latest proves that he is indeed his father’s son, spinning a gruesome yarn from the alchemical fusing of tech and flesh. And while his films also traffic in the mangled consequences of hubristic technology, the younger Cronenberg has a style all to himself, trading in the tongue-in-cheek grotesqueries of The Fly and Videodrome for a grisly, steely darkness that drifts in and out of psychedelic dreamscapes. Anchored by two nerve-fraying performances from Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott, Possessor brings this style to a confident peak, giving us a complicated horror story that touches upon everything from class warfare to occupational ennui to gender dysphoria. It may not have the economy to tackle all the issues it invokes, but Possessor is unparalleled when it comes to its primary objective of turning its body-swapping assassinations into the stuff of ghastly nightmares.
Andrea Riseborough plays Tasya Vos, an elite operative of a shadowy organization that specializes in assassinations and corporate espionage. Not your standard wetworks outfit, this manipulative cabal deploys its killers with remote body-swapping technology to get close to their targets, striking victims while wearing the skins of those they trust. Possessor’s opening salvo drops us mid-mission, with Vos inhabiting the body of a Black woman named Holly (Gabrielle Graham). Calibrating a dial with a bloody jack in the back of her head, she finishes her prep and walks into her host body’s job, casually strolling up to her target before jamming a blade into his throat and stabbing him over a dozen times. And when Vos is unable to pull the trigger on herself to exit Holly’s body to return to her own, she chooses to commit suicide by cop, dying in a hail of gunfire.
“It may not have the economy to tackle the issues it invokes, but Possessor is unparalleled when it comes to its primary objective: to turn its body-swapping assassinations into the stuff of ghastly nightmares.”
Intentionally or not, this harrowing introduction - in which an innocent Black woman is killed by the police - is a powerful but glib way to throw the audience straight into the deep end. Nevertheless, the opening scene is a fitting introduction to Possessor’s world, because it’s precisely this type of violence that has taken a clear toll on Vos’s psyche. Post mission, a visibly shaken Vos is given a thorough baseline examination by her handler, Girder (an icy Jennifer Jason Leigh, recalling her role in 2018’s Annihilatiion), in which she struggles to identify objects that belong to her. A glimpse into her life away from work also shows signs of psychological unraveling: Upon visiting her estranged husband (Rossif Sutherland) and son, Vos pauses to rehearse banal small talk that should come easily to her. From Oblivion to Nocturnal Animals to Mandy, I’ve been a big fan of Andrea Riseborough throughout her career as a genre character actor, and her chameleonic skills are a perfect fit for the role of Tasya Vos. Riseborough delivers a powerful yet subdued performance as this jaded assassin - a career killer slowly unmoored from reality and ridden with trauma, guilt, and malaise.
Possessor introduces its main assassination target soon after: billionaire data-mining CEO John Parse (Sean Bean, amusingly toying with his reputation for dying onscreen). For the company to get within killing reach, Vos is tasked with inhabiting the body of Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), the boyfriend of Parse’s daughter, Ava (Tuppence Middleton). Complications arise when Tate’s mind is much more resilient than expected, initiating a bloody, psychic struggle for control. Abbott’s portrayal of Tate is a simmering powder keg, astonishingly conveying the ineffable sensation that someone else is living within his skin, on the verge of explosive violence at all times. His mental duel with Vos forms the surreal crux of the film, allowing Cronenberg to go full-on bonkers with his visuals. Like Panos Cosmatos setpieces on PCP, Karim Hussain’s mesmerizing photography relays a trippy phantasmagoria: naked effigies melt like hot wax, faces peel away in warped fashion, and limbs rend and reconfigure themselves in unnatural ways.
“Abbott’s portrayal of Tate is a simmering powder keg, astonishingly conveying the ineffable sensation that someone else is living within his skin, on the verge of explosive violence at all times.”
And of course, no Cronenberg film - from David or Brandon - would be complete without some stomach-churning violence. While his father favors over-the-top spectacle and the straddling of a line between the gross and the cartoon, Brandon exercises his penchant for gore that strikes straight into the heart of verisimilitude. Eschewing far-fetched mutations and exploding heads, Possessor reaches for a sharp and visceral grisliness when Vos and Tate’s struggle for control spills into the real world: Severed digits, pulped faces, and scooped eyeballs are just a few of the nasty surprises the film has in store. With its punctuations of spectacular brutality, gorehounds will get a full meal from Possessor.
As Vos and Tate lock horns on the metaphysical battlefield, so does Possessor with its own lofty sci-fi concepts. Like Antiviral’s jumbled messaging on Big Pharma corruption and celebrity idolatry, Possessor isn’t quite sure how to balance its commentary with its bone-crunching violence, but one can’t help but admire Cronenberg’s twisted vision and its execution. A symphony of head-trip imagery and dizzying gore elevated by a few gut-wrenching performances, Possessor is the type of potent sci-fi horror that has been absent from our screens for much too long.
