It’s already been eight years, give or take, since Brandon Cronenberg’s first film, Antiviral (2012): a cold, unflinching and decidedly grotesque satire on celebrity culture, explored via the body horror genre which his father David helped to establish. Possessor (2020) picks up the questions of personhood which Antiviral posed and takes them still further, delivering an even more accomplished film which retains that artistic Cronenberg Jr. flair for presenting the horrors of disassociation.
And we’re straight in with the body horror: a young woman called Holly (Gabrielle Graham) slots a cable into a port on her head: as she moves a dial on the piece of kit to which the cable is attached, it seems to whirl her through the whole gamut of human emotions. Thus adjusted and purged of them – like a hi-tech version of catharsis – she goes to work as a hostess in a hotel club, where she is suitably compos mentis to walk calmly up to a patron, stabbing him to death. She then dithers on committing suicide by pistol, before instead committing suicide by cop.
This is an ending, but not the ending: it’s all been possible via mind-control technology, through which hitwoman Tas (Andrea Riseborough) has taken over Holly’s mind and actions, using her to assassinate a target and escaping punishment by conveniently ending the life of the stooge who did the deed. Terminal for Holly; suitably arduous for Tasya, for whom it takes time to re-ground herself afterwards. These scenes are reminiscent of Blade Runner 2049 (2017), with its own ‘recalibrations’ for its lead character. The shady company in charge of all of this needs to be sure that she’s back to herself again before she takes on the next job; the answer is not a resounding ‘yes’. But, agreeing to take a short break, Tas goes to visit her estranged husband Michael (Rossif Sutherland) and young son Ira (Gage Graham-Arbuthnot). The name ‘Ira’ means ‘watchful one’ in Hebrew; this nicely sums up a little boy who seems old beyond his years, whilst his relationship with his mother is remote enough that she seems surprised by his interests and aptitudes. It’s clear she has divided loyalties. On one hand, there’s her work life – a technically-abetted lie, as she commits murder with no direct comeuppance. On the other hand, her roles as wife and mother are clearly compromised, increasingly impinged upon by the horrors of her job.
Before long, Tas wants to get back to work. We see her preparing for the experience, spying, studying the character of the man she is going to inhabit before the sync takes place. Her target this time is called Colin Tait (the incredible Christopher Abbott). Tait would be almost beneath contempt, were he not in a relationship with Ava Parse (the incredibly-named Tuppence Middleton). Ava’s father is the owner of a vast data-mining corporation which, as we see, observes its quarry to an absurd level of detail. John Parse (Sean Bean) has given Tait a job, essentially as a way of lording it over the shmuck who is dating his daughter, but this is good news for Tas’s employers: Tait can get close. Very close. If they can take out Parse, they can facilitate getting hold of an awful lot of money and power.
Tasya achieves the sync, but something is wrong: the job seems precarious from the outset, and she struggles to keep it together. The ad libs which caused her trouble in the first sync we saw are resolutely more harmful here, and it becomes less clear who is in the ascendancy. It’s far more clear things are going to take a disastrous turn: how the film achieves this, and the experience this gives the viewer is certainly not predictable, or an easy watch.
This battle for autonomy is a more sombre, sober kind of vision than David Cronenberg ever brought to the screen; as such it very much feels like a stylistic continuation of Antiviral, with the same fantastic eye for cinematography: the interiors, the lighting, the colour palettes and the composition of shots are a joy to look at. It’s also a very tactile film. Synced bodies linger over the details – blood, fabric, skin, hair – whilst Tasya ‘proves’ her personhood by examining mementos, simple objects with elevated significances. I also adored the use of distance and silence in the film: people are dwarfed by expanses of dark space around them, dialogue is rendered more expressive by long periods of quiet – or else, you find yourself noticing what characters don’t say, as much as what they do. Accordingly, given all this calm and quiet, the film’s moments of violence seem all the more vivid; that being said, there’s no film in which these scenes wouldn’t be shocking. They punctuate the film, brief moments of rage and desperation against a backdrop of minimal exposition. It’s important that they’re there.
Despite this backdrop, the film does extraordinary things with its characterisation – the more extraordinary, given we essentially have people hidden inside other bodies here. The shifts in the power balance between these people are cleverly achieved and remain plausible throughout. To successfully enact all of this requires great skill, and as such Abbott really steals the second act of this film, as much as Riseborough retains presence throughout, an increasingly cornered, harried character, sympathetic if unlikeable. There are highly imaginative sequences which explore what happens to selfhood during the processes suggested, doing more with the idea of dreams or hallucinations than we might have seen elsewhere lately; on the flip side, Possessor throws in a version of reality which maybe feels too close for comfort, especially its vision of internet privacy gone to hell.
As all certainties dissolve, Possessor cements itself as a bleak, sad, discomfiting experience. It’s definitely a film which will reward a rewatch, though – given its almighty impact – this may not be for a while, all considered. Brandon Cronenberg may not be churning out the features, but if they’re as good as this, then so be it. We’ll wait.
Possessor is on digital HD 1 February and Blu-ray & DVD 8 February from Signature Entertainment.