Possession (1981)

Director: Andrzej Zulawski

Starring: Sam Neill, Isabelle Adjani, Heinz Bennent

A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.

There are two reasons why I wanted to see this film: it stars Sam Neill, and it has a high IMDB rating.

Apparently, director Andrzej Zulawski wrote the screenplay during his divorce, which has been referred to at the time as painful. This is evident during the film’s first half, with the lead characters, Anna (Adjani) and Mark (Neill) going through serious marital problems.

Mark’s behavior is not rational and edges towards psychopathic tendencies, which made me question his sanity. The movie’s real horror was having to watch the couple fighting endlessly, and made for a very unpleasant watch. There was a lot of yelling, and screaming from Anna. ‘Possession’ is a weird film – weird in the sense the characters acted in the most peculiar ways. Certainly not normal behavior…

Anna’s character is complicated. She runs backwards and forwards between Mark and Heinrich (Bennent) – her boyfriend – and finally away from both of them. (Heinrich himself was a rather strange character). In her apartment, a creature is revealed. It is never explained or explored, though, hence the film’s ending required serious analysis. But what the flying f*ck was this actually all about?? This was a boring and confusing movie, and not entertaining at all. I thought this was a complete mess. And I’m not the only one, since the film was a box office failure. It only recuperated $1.1 million of its $2.4 million budget. Need I say more…

Oh, my only positive comment: the photography was good.

Would I watch it again? No.