Brandon Cronenberg offers up a refreshingly provocative sci-fi vision in his 2020 film Possessor. As director and scriptwriter, Cronenberg weaves together a singular tale about an assassin-for-hire who doesn’t go about her job in the traditional way. Instead, she transmits her consciousness into the minds of her victims by surreptitiously implanting chips in their brains and then using a special machine to assume control.
With this plot, Cronenberg maintains a tense relationship between ethereal technologies and the very corporeal consequences of invading another person’s body. Cronenberg’s fixation on embodiment is very reminiscent of his father David’s works. The elder Cronenberg’s films explore taboos through body horror – an approach to narrative storytelling that graphically depicts transformations and mutations of the human form. While the younger Cronenberg carries his father’s thematic torch, he uses it to shine a radical light on new ideas with Possessor.
Set in an alternate 2008, Possessor stars Andrea Riseborough as Vos, the professional hitman whose work takes a severe toll on her relationship with her husband and son. The film’s unrelenting tone is established from its first scene, where a young black woman named Holly, portrayed by Gabrielle Graham, brutally stabs a man in a packed restaurant before she is killed by police. It soon becomes obvious Holly was inhabited by Vos as part of an assassination plot.
The implications of this intense sequence frame the depraved power struggles that consume the rest of the movie. With each job, Vos becomes more and more separated from her own body and personal emotional tethers. Egged on by her boss, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character Girder, Vos accepts another assignment: killing CEO John Parse and his daughter Ava, played by Sean Bean and Tuppence Middleton. In order to complete the task, Vos possesses the body of Ava’s fiance Colin. Christopher Abbott matches Riseborough’s tenacity and devotion to her role as Colin, who goes into self-preservation mode when he realizes his consciousness has been overrun by an outside force. Vos’s plan to dispatch Parse and Ava through Colin backfires, as does her plan to force Colin to end his own life afterward.
What transpires from there is a cerebral, messy battle between Colin and Vos that frequently erupts into pure barbarousness. Blood pours, faces melt, abstract imagery abounds, and the distinction between Colin and Vos disintegrates along with whatever humanity remains inside them. Riseborough and Abbott give performances of a lifetime as the movie’s action bubbles over into a startling, anxiety-inducing climax.
Like his father, Brandon utilizes practical effects and prosthetics in lieu of CGI in Possessor. He hired makeup artist Dan Martin, who worked on Richard Stanley’s 2019 film Color Out of Space, to bring his perverse concept for the film to life. This makes the underlying terror in Possessor all the more tangible as viewers embark upon an emotional, impressionistic journey. Instead of completely departing from the physical plane, Possessor grounds its fantastical elements in the very real violence people inflict upon each other.
There’s no denying the older Cronenberg laid much of the foundation for films like Possessor. David’s penchant for visualizing traumas, fears, and psychological upheavals through bodily distortions eliminates the distinction between the physical and the psychological. This obsession is evident from the start of Cronenberg’s filmmaking career, showcased by earlier releases such as Shivers and The Brood.
Subsequent features like Scanners and Videodrome apply these concepts to the corporate sector, drawing paranoid conclusions about military contractors and media conglomerates. David’s transgressive themes finally caught the attention of mainstream audiences in 1986 with The Fly. Scientist Seth Brundle’s disturbing metamorphosis into a humanoid housefly solidified David’s legacy as a purveyor of experimental body horror features.
Brandon Cronenberg may be his father’s son, but he’s forged a unique path for himself in horror and sci-fi. Possessor is Brandon’s second feature-length film, preceded by 2012’s Antiviral. His debut centers around a facility that acquires various viruses and diseases from celebrities that can be injected into fans at a cost. Antiviral, which stars Caleb Landry Jones, makes some profound statements about celebrity culture while giving Brandon the opportunity to harness a unique visual style replete with vivid colorizations, gruesome aesthetics, and technical ingenuity. He manages to build upon and improve his ideas in Possessor by investing in richer character development and more effective pacing.
Even with its transgressive themes, Possessor achieved massive critical success. Considered one of the top films of 2020, it has received praise for its special effects, acting, and unique premise. The film does away with genre tropes as it builds a truly volatile world where no one is who they seem to be, where attempts to retain any semblance of personhood are met with hostility and conflict, and where the surveillance state reigns supreme.
At 41, Brandon Cronenberg has produced a film unlike any other, one that pays homage to what came before it while setting a new precedent for cross-genre filmmaking. Possessor proves sci-fi and horror are far from dead. Reactions to the film’s nightmarish themes also prove the time is ripe for cinematic experiences that push boundaries and leave moviegoers with lingering philosophical questions about the nature of existence.
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