Possession

Perhaps it has to do with the title. At one time, the Sarah Michelle Gellar/Lee Pace suspense flick was titled Addicted. Then the title changed, and everything went south. While the movie would now be titled Possession, it seemed much more like a hot potato. Possession simply could not make its way to theaters. Surely it couldn’t have helped to share a title with an extremely poorly received Gwyneth Paltrow/Aaron Eckhart romance. Then, with the release date constantly being pushed back, the fall of the distribution company, and the DVD delays, there wasn’t even time for the title to be re-associated for a new audience.

Anyone interested in seeing Possession was undoubtedly frustrated at the wait for its availability – if he or she maintained any interest in it at all. Were Lee Pace not in the film, I know Possession would never have made my ‘To See’ list. Gellar’s work has never tempted this reviewer, but so far, a Lee Pace movie has always been worth the wait (see: The Fall). From the trailer for Possession, it was apparent that the story of a felonious brother waking from a coma believing he is the romantic brother and husband of a beautiful young lawyer (Gellar) was either going to be very well done, or very poorly done. There would be no in-between.

I would like to take this moment to praise the trailer editor. The trailer was so enthralling that I became eager to watch the movie and find out how exactly the subject would be handled and resolved. Sadly, it seems that the filmmakers had yet to decide these matters when the film was made. What seems like a good story concept is poorly fleshed out and ill explained. Many unanswered questions and potential suspense moments are sprinkled throughout, though none of them seem to interest the characters or director. Only in the beginning, where cheaply predictable ‘foreshadowing’ elements are combined in the most deliberately shot, formulaic scenes since the videos used in high school Spanish class.

The concept at the core of the film is fascinating. Can one person wake up from a coma, possessing the soul of another? Amnesia is no less mysterious an idea; why not? Especially for the sake of a movie. Were I in Gellar’s character’s situation, I too might do an internet search to figure out what’s going on. But to make the jump from “psychological” phenomena to “possession”… did Buffy grow up to be a lawyer? Who knows. It’s one of many story holes plaguing the film.

Performances are as you would expect. Gellar is the standard suspense-film heroine, Michael Landes serves well as her sweeter-than-pie artist husband, and Pace – I may be a little biased, but Pace does his best with what he is given. His Roman is both dirty and angsty before the accident, then softer and desperate after. Were the answers not handed to you in the beginning of the film, the transformation would be much more engaging.

To the benefit of the viewer’s imagination, the DVD includes a brief featurette and deleted scenes with an alternate ending. The featurette seems to reveal some uncertainty on set about the truth of the story, at least the truth they intend to tell. The extra scenes, significantly different and far more interesting than the ending used in the final cut, suggest that Possession, as the filmmakers abandoned it, would have worked better as a Choose Your Own Adventure DVD. Perhaps we would all have the benefit of a film we could enjoy, instead of an unfortunate corruption of a Japanese thriller. Unless of course, you view the film as a reason to be less afraid of the dark. After all, if there’s a brooding Lee Pace stalking around and in love with me, what’s the problem?