Review by Annie Riordan
“Based On Actual Events.”
God how I hate seeing those words at the beginning of a horror movie. It usually means that somewhere, at some point, some very small event occurred which is now going to be blown way out of proportion, sexed up for your viewing pleasure, and stuffed full of gore which not only never happened but also defies all of the known laws of physics. The Haunting In Connecticut? Sorry kids, never happened. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Yeah, more like the Wisconsin Elmer Fudd graverobber. The “truth” behind those Based On Actual Events movies is usually disappointing to say the least, a pale shadow withering beneath the sound and fury of its tarted up Hollywood cousin.
Not in this case, however.
The true story of The Dybbuk Box (which can be found at http://www.dibbukbox.com/ or seen on the Paranormal Witness episode of the same name) is a horror enthusiasts wet dream. It’s the tale of a lonely little Jewish wine box, sold at auction after its elderly owner died at the ripe old age of 103. Her dying wish: to be buried with the box, which she steadfastly swore must NEVER be opened. Instead, an antiques dealer gets a hold of it, opens it and watches helplessly as the box is bought and returned several times, following complaints of foul odors, nightmares, poltergeist activity and strange, dark emanations. The box goes on to plague the lives of people halfway across the country after being sold on eBay, causing illness and pestilence, and apparently now sits in the basement of a disused house, shunned and collecting dust, its current owners too frightened to deal with it. Now THAT’S a great horror story! And it’s apparently all true, backed up by numerous witnesses all over the country who started out as skeptics and ran away hardcore believers after being exposed to the ugly little cabinet with the Hebrew inscriptions on it. I for one wouldn’t touch the fucking thing. Better safe than sorry.
But no, the Hollywood fuck-up machine can never be satisfied with a perfectly good story. However, this time around, rather than gussying it up and trying to pass it off as more than it ever was, Ghost House and Sam Raimi – for reasons unfathomable – decide to water it down and remove every aspect of the story that was either interesting or scary. By the time they were through with it, the only thing that The Possession and the story of the Dybbuk Box have left in common is the box itself. That’s where all similarity ends and the sanitized, PG-13 teenage-target tale begins.
Affluent white, suburban yuppie couple divorces, even though they still really love each other. Joint custody of bratty teenage daughter and introspective artsy daughter commences. Cutesy bonding scenes at dad’s bachelor pad (we ordered pizza, oooh, how naughty!) intertwine with life as usual at mom’s house with her stiffly unappealing new boyfriend. Blah blah let’s stop at a yard sale long enough for introspective artsy daughter to catch sight of a dusty old box that no little girl would ever look at twice. When she starts acting weird, we’ll blame it on puberty and the stress of the divorce long enough for dad to figure out what’s happening and mom to realize how much she needs him so they can team up and save their little girl from the forces of evil which have been making her eat like a pig, dry-heave and start up a moth collection. Oh, and can we shoehorn Matisyahu into this somehow?
The origin of the box is ignored. How the demon got in there to begin with isn’t considered important. A brief venture into the Hasidic Jewish community of Borough Park in Brooklyn could have been quite interesting, but is simply used for exposition purposes and tossed aside once it has served its purpose as a vehicle in which to drop off the aforementioned Matisyahu. The acting is fucking awful: Kyra Sedgwick is glassy eyed and seems to have been told that she was playing the part of a Stepford wife. Jeffrey Dean Morgan does the best he can, but just doesn’t have jack shit to work with. The kids are stereotypically one-dimensional. Everyone plays their part woodenly and by-the-numbers, and disappears over the horizon once they’re done. The climactic scene, set in a hospital where nurses stations are never staffed and the morgue attendants all called out sick, is so silly as to be painful. This is just slumber party dreck. I’ve seen scarier commercials for lawn furniture.
So why am I wasting my time, and everyone else’s, reviewing a film that we all knew from the get-go was going to reek harder than a rotting woodchuck carcass in an overflowing outhouse?
Because it could have been good. And considering the meaty source material, it SHOULD have been good. But it’s not. It sucks. And it sucks because Hollywood doesn’t give a fuck about originality, or truth, or integrity. Movies like this are the inflatable sheep of the sex world: mass produced, blankly identical and totally lifeless.
The Possession is available now on Region 1 and Region 2 DVD, Blu-ray and VOD from Lionsgate.