24FPS@LFF2020: Possessor

Dir: Brandon Cronenberg

Thanks to David and his 50-year career, the Cronenberg name is synonymous with body horror. Brandon Cronenberg is nothing if not proof that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. 2012's Antiviral was a confident debut that nevertheless co-opted both themes and a visual feel from his father's cinema. Possessor may hew even closer to one particular film of Cronenberg Sr's in its themes and ideas, but visually it sees Brandon moving on, keeping the spirit of the family name alive but finding his own identity in the process.

The concept sees Andrea Riseborough as Tasya Vos, an operative for a company that uses brain implants to allow its agents to take over the minds and bodies of real people and use them as vessels to carry out assassinations. Vos' latest assignment is a big one; use the body of Colin Tate (Christoper Abbott) to murder his girlfriend (Tuppence Middleton) and her father (Sean Bean), so that the father's company passes entirely into his son's control. However, something goes wrong, and Vos finds herself fighting Colin for control.

The basic idea of Possessor owes a great deal to eXistenZ and like that film this one never allowed me to feel entirely grounded in reality. We first meet Andrea Riseborough's Vos as she is extracted from a subject at the end of a mission and while she passes the test to see if she's suffered any adverse effect on her brain, the performance gives the sense that her answers are rotely remembered, not especially indicative of anything deeper. This is where the casting of Riseborough and her costume and make-up design is especially clever. She is almost a blank canvas; her features de-emphasized and pale, her hair white blonde and barely styled, and her every expression rehearsed (explicitly so when we see her returning home to her estranged husband and son). It's always as if she's nothing more than a vessel, something again echoed when we see the transfer process, a sequence that is like the opening of Ghost in the Shell run backward and forward through a hall of mirrors.  The nod to eXistenZ is even more explicitly made with the casting of Jennifer Jason Leigh as Riseborough's boss, Girder. While she's only a side character there might be an interesting reading in the idea that this is all just another game by Allegra Gellar.

If his father's filmography divides fairly neatly into horror of the body and of the mind, Possessor finds Brandon Cronenberg combining the two, mind control (or the loss of it, whichever of the leading characters you're talking about) has seldom been depicted as something so visceral. The splatter in this film is often grossly impressive in a way that recalls the best work of the likes of Tom Savini (I'm thinking of the teeth being ground up against a poker, or the literal eye-popping moment), but more interestingly than that, the effects are used to express the way the two consciousnesses inhabiting Colin's body are tearing at each other in pursuit of overall control. The moment we find ourselves inside his mind, an entity trying to rip itself apart, is an image that is not only incredible technically, it manages to boil the film down into a single essential image. Cronenberg also explores this duality in a sequence in which we see Riseborough, her face appearing to melt, just as in the story we wonder if her very presence is dissolving. It's perhaps a little on the nose, but it's a stunningly realized and compellingly weird visual metaphor.

The acting challenge this dynamic poses for Riseborough and Christopher Abbott is substantial. Riseborough, given how blank her character must be, has less to work with, but her detachment sells the toll that the work she does takes on Vos and her updates to Girder allow us to see the denial she's in about the process beginning to go wrong. Abbott, who has turned in some great performances in genre fare, notably Nicolas Pesce's Piercing, has a lot to play here, often he must embody Vos in Colin's body, but there are also passages in which he has to play a confused Colin, wondering if he's losing his mind and sequences that require him to flip between personae almost line by line. It's a complex piece of work and one Abbott carries off with impressive nuance, especially in the film's final, bizarre, confrontation.

Possessor is almost a bit much to take in on first viewing; a nightmare that cracks and refracts its characters and its visuals through familial influences as well as through its writer/director's own increasingly individual imagination. It's grotesque yet thoughtful, full of concerns about technology and identity, and I think it will take a few more viewings to fully unpick. The good news is that it's going to be fascinating to pick this movie's brain, even as it does yours.

★★★★