Possession

This one is definitely going to require a second viewing. Perhaps a third and fourth. The ambiguity of the title (is it about a woman being possessed, or about a man possessing a woman?) carries over into the narrative. In spades, as it were.

The film is about a disintegrating marriage: Mark, a guy working for shadowy people doing unexplained work (though hints are dropped towards assassination, implausible as it seems), is away from home a lot, and unable to please his wife. Anna, his wife, has had a lover for a long time. The two fight a lot, sullenly refuse to communicate a lot, get weak and weepy a lot, and use their kid as weapon against each other. Typical light-hearted family fare.

The trouble begins when Mark confronts Anna's long-time lover and finds that this isn't who she's been running off to spend time with. Well, who is it then? Her best friend Margie? Her appeared-out-of-nowhere twin, who is their son's schoolteacher? The man with the pink socks? A manifestation of her own desire gradually becoming flesh from the inside out?

The answer is fairly obvious, but less obvious is the nature of the Allsexthing and the role of the title: many characters act possessed, particularly in the proximity of the creature, but given the general craziness most of them display due to stress, emotion, or drugs, it is hard to be sure. Even more difficult is explaining why, after tightly wrapping things up and preparing to close the plot, Mark suddenly goes off the deep end in the last 15 or so minutes of the film.

I could probably spill forth pages of possible explanations with key points to watch in the film, all of which would be invalid. Find a copy of this (make sure it is the 127 minute version), sit back with a notebook, and prepare to spend 4 to 6 hours scrutinizing it.

* * * R A T I N G * * *
Possession (IMDB)

Wince : [**___]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [*****]

Beerequisite : [*____]
Pornability : [***__]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [**___]

Scene I'd watch on endless loop: "Almost... almost...".

What I would do different: The breakdown at the end looks like it is missing a couple of supporting scenes, perhaps to speed things up. On the second viewing, things became more clear, but there is still the matter of the police showing up outside of Margie's house, and who the pink-socked man turned out to be. Explaining these requires a bit of hand-waving, which means the extra four minute of film should have been spent justifying them, minor as they are.