The Possession

Remember that movie I totally would rather have seen instead of seeing the Apparition that one night, which made me so mad that it cost my next door neighbor her life?  Yeah, this is that movie, and if you want to how I felt about the Apparition then you can read my praiseworthy review calling it the "Citizen Kane of our generation"... just kidding, I would never donate that kind of complement to that piece of crap.  It was actually a few months ago that I saw this movie and I just forgot to write a review, but since I've recently watched it again, it's about as fresh in my mind as a subway sandwich in my belly.  In this story you have a man and his wife going through a divorce, and unless you lived under a rock you'll realize that divorce affects the children just as much as the parents, if not more.  The father (Clyde) is struggling to keep the respect and love of his daughters intact throughout the divorce, and while every thing was going dandy on their weekend together, they decided to make the dumbest decision of their lives by stopping by a garage sale, and it's not because the father didn't have cash with him.  He bought his daughter Em a wooden box with crazy Hebrew engravings all over it, and as time wore on Em became increasingly obsessed with the box like the way a squirrel is obsessed with his nuts, and eventually she became friends with the unknown entity within the box as well. 

The Good:
Even though I'm a fan of practically every exorcism movie out there (even the Crappy Exorcist II) I recognize that there isn't a lot of original material going around these days with the genre, and they all try to either outdo The Exorcist or be just as good, which usually means they fail about 99% of the time.  Although there are the common exorcism characteristics in The Possession that we've seen already in a majority of horror films, the biggest characteristic in this movie that separates it from all others is that it surrounds itself with Judaism theology instead of Christianity, surprisingly bringing something completely new to the genre; I found that incredibly interesting and awesome! The Acting surprisingly didn't suck as well, and for that I would like to thank Jeffrey Dean Morgan who played the struggling father, and Natasha Calis who played the possessed Em.  First of all the girl who played Em--I've never heard of that woman before, but she was perfect in playing the innocent fun-loving girl who just so happens to get screwed over when she picked up the wrong wooden box at a garage sale.  And Jeffery Dean Morgan?  Is there anything  negative I can say about that stud-muffin of a man?  No!  Maybe it's because I liked him on Supernatural so much, or maybe it's because his voice is likened unto a white James Earl Jones, I don't know, but what I do know is that whenever he gets screen time he basically steals the shot. 

The Bad:
First of all that old woman who sold the box at the garage sale.  What were you thinking?!!  couldn't you just give it to one of your relatives whom you hate at the next family reunion, instead of letting a little girl in a stupid hat pick it up?  "Check yourself before you wreck yourself" ya idiot!  The other thing I didn't like (which really wasn't the movie's fault) was Em's ditzy and self-absorbed sister Hannah.  She would constantly mouth off to her parents, claim that her father was beating Em even though she was clearly doing it to herself, and felt that the world was against her, despite the fact that she had things pretty easy.  Obviously this wasn't the movie's fault, but it still made me want to do something mean to her, like taking a large branch and sticking it in the front wheel of her bike while she's traveling 60mph down a hill... and then to NOT say I'm sorry.

The Ugly:
Something that I failed to mention earlier was that this movie was produced by my man-love Sam Raimi!  He is the kind of guy I would like to share a tall chocolate shake with, but don't worry because we'd each have our own separate straws... or would we?  I thought this was a pleasant exorcism movie to watch, and unlike many of the other exorcism movies in the genre, The Possession (for some reason) has great rewatch value, which in my book means that this one's a keeper!

5 out of 5