Identity & Technology in Cronenberg’s ‘Possessor’
Possessor is the second feature film from writer and director Brandon Cronenberg, son of the legendary director of such films as The Fly, Videodrome, and eXistenZ. Like those films, Possessor also deals with questions of identity, technology, and consciousness—and like those films, it also adds a heaping dose of body horror. This is perhaps what makes Brandon’s job so difficult. With such a towering figure ahead of him, he must work twice as hard to differentiate himself from his father’s legacy. For his trouble, Cronenberg has created a tense, trippy thriller that, though beautiful, may turn a few stomachs along the way.
In Possessor, a nameless corporation that deals in high-profile assassinations is contracted to take out the head of a major tech company, John Parse (Sean Bean), as well as his daughter, Ava (Tuppence Middleton). The firm’s means of doing so is fairly straightforward. They plan on sending their star talent, Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), in to hijack the body of Ava’s fiance, Colin (Christopher Abbott), create a public scene to establish cause, and then commit the double murder before turning the gun on herself, severing the connection between Colin’s brain and her own, walking away scot-free.
As complicated as the plan sounds, the film actually gives us an excellent introduction scene to ease us into this futuristic world of corporate sabotage, without inundating us with jargon and gadgets. We actually start by following Vos on another job, in media res, as she dispatches a fat-cat lawyer in a private club. But we already see a potential wrinkle. It quickly becomes apparent just how much Vos is beginning to relish the carnage she inflicts. And as we soon see, all is not quite well with Tasya Vos.
Identity & Technology
When Vos does finally begin her infiltration of the Parse family, however, Cronenberg, along with D.P. Karim Hussain, lets loose on the visual spectacle. Deep hues saturate whole scenes at a time as the mental and emotional tolls of the job begin to add up. Visual hallucinations plague Vos as she slowly begins to lose her grip, culminating in an epic showdown within her host’s own body.
Andrea Riseborough in Possessor, image via IMDB
Taken together, this provides the bud of a fascinating exploration of identity and the liminal boundary between self and reality—already a favorite theme of the Cronenberg family and of body horror in general. Vos makes her career not only out of ending lives, but of assuming the lives of other actual people. In this world, one’s self is clearly not restricted to their own body, however illicit or secretive Vos’s profession may be. How can one ever expect to lead a normal, private life when they know that at any moment, anyone they know and love could be an impostor? Even the general populace in Possessor knows they can’t maintain any expectation of privacy. Parse’s company, Zoothroo, is a data-mining giant that openly engages in the cataloguing of the population’s personal belongings by manually spying through webcams. It’s a depressingly relatable fear in our own world, magnified by the casualness with which it’s discussed in the film.
Even without the suffocating threat of a surveillance state, Vos is an emotionally fractured woman. To her credit, she recognizes her own signs of distress but whether she is too proud or too scared, she balks at getting the help she needs. She bears many of the symptoms of PTSD, no doubt caused by the very fact that each job she takes must end in the subjective self-killing of the body she inhabits. This aspect of the character is played to nuanced perfection by Riseborough (and Abbott, who spends a good deal of the film playing Vos, as well). There’s a hesitation in their responses, a distance that can’t be closed, even by—or especially by—those closest to her. The way that Vos must rehearse her discussions with her family, as if she is preparing for just another job, shows how disconnected she’s become from her own sense of self. In fact, the very concept of having her own life is upended. Even before we meet her, it’s clear that Vos no longer feels welcome in her own skin. It’s much easier for her to hide behind the mask of another person than to confront her own needs and the needs of her family.
Possessor covers a lot of ground in new and interesting ways. It touches on a lot of themes that are only ever increasing in relevancy and in a way, that’s sort of its downfall. For much of the film, Possessor fails to maintain its focus as it tries to cram in as much thematic content as it can, tripping itself up in the process. Had Cronenberg trimmed the fat and concentrated on one or two fewer directions, the film would have felt much smoother. It certainly still works—the performances are top-notch and Cronenberg and Hussain have great chemistry together, but it lacks the gut-punch impact that it might have had. Despite this, Possessor is still a lot of fun and worth a look for anyone who likes the gory horror of any of the elder Cronenberg’s more grounded flicks. Brandon has a good eye and his first feature, Antiviral, shows that he has the potential to make some waves. He’s already proven that he has some wild ideas to put on the screen and I look forward to seeing what’s next for him. Hopefully this time, it takes fewer than eight years to bring his next project to life because like many fans of the genre, I’m just happy to see the family name on the screen again.
Article Written by Ande Thomas
Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.
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