Possession
★Skip itIs Possession worth watching? (No spoilers)
Truly brilliant, fearless acting, and not much else. The characters feel flat, their motives don't convince, and by the last half hour it's hard to stay invested. Watch it only if you want to see Isabelle Adjani's legendary performance.
⚠️ Spoiler warning: everything below the quick take, including the full review and ending explained, contains spoilers.
Possession review
Possession is a perfect example of truly brilliant acting, and nothing else. The characters feel truly flat, and whose motives feel unconvincing.
The last 30 minutes was hard to watch, as I had lost all attachment to the film and its characters. And the final doppelganger scene felt nothing short of ridiculous.
Is Possession scary?
Scare level: 2/5
It's disturbing more than scary: screaming, manic breakdowns, gore, and a tentacled creature. The famous subway scene is genuinely intense. It's exhausting rather than jump-scary.
Possession ending explained
Anna has been keeping a slimy, tentacled creature in an apartment and having a relationship with it, killing people who get too close. By the end, the creature has grown into an exact double of her husband, Mark. Mark, meanwhile, discovers that his son's teacher, Helen, is an exact, gentle double of Anna.
In the finale Mark and Anna are shot by police and die together in a stairwell. The creature-Mark escapes. Helen locks herself in with Mark's son, Bob, as the doorbell rings, presumably the double arriving. Bob begs her not to open it, then drowns himself in the bath. The film ends with sirens and explosions outside, as if the world itself is ending.
The film is mostly read as a raw metaphor for divorce (director Andrzej Żuławski made it after his own marriage fell apart). Each spouse 'creates' an idealized replacement for the other, and the cost lands on their child. The Cold War Berlin setting adds the sense of everything collapsing.
My take: the final doppelgänger scene felt ridiculous after I'd already lost all attachment to the characters.
Does Possession have a post-credits scene?
No. Possession has no mid-credits or post-credits scene.
Movies like Possession
- Eraserhead (1977) ★★★★ – surreal art-house horror about relationships and fear
- The Brood (1979) – a divorce turned literally monstrous
- Under the Skin (2013) ½ – art-house horror built more on mood than story
- mother! (2017) – an unhinged allegory that goes completely off the rails