Film / Possession

"What I miscarried there was sister Faith, and what was left is sister Chance. So I had to take care of my faith to protect it."

— Anna

A 1981 psychological horror drama, directed by Andrzej Żuławski and starring a young Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani.

Mark (Neill), a secret agent, returns from an overseas assignment to discover that his wife Anna (Adjani) has left him. After she disappears, abandoning their child in her apartment, Mark manages to track down his wife's lover. He turns out to be Heinrich: a swinger who knows kung fu and lives with his mother. However, Heinrich also hasn't seen Anna for weeks. Together, the two men track down Anna's new lover, a lover that might not even be human...

Banned in the UK, most likely due to Carlo Rambaldi's impressively goopy effects, which still hold up quite well today. It's currently available uncut on DVD/Blu-Ray.

Not to be confused with the 2012 Sam Raimi film The Possession. Or with Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt.

This film provides examples of:

• Affair Letters: Mark learns of Anna's lover Heinrich through a postcard he sent addressed to her.
• And This Is for...: As Mark is slapping Anna across the face, he angrily tells her "You know what this is for? The lies!".
• Beard of Sorrow: Mark grows one after spending three weeks in a hotel room as a consequence of having been just left by Anna.
• Bedroom Adultery Scene: Mark walks in on Anna having passionate sex with the creature in the bedroom of her second apartment.
• Better Partner Assertion: Anna bluntly tells Mark that her lover Heinrich is better at sex than him. Even Heinrich tells Mark that while Mark was unable to make Anna happy, Heinrich and Anna reached "a state of perfect harmony" together.
• Betty and Veronica: Mark has Helen, his son's kindly schoolteacher, as the Betty, and Anna, his mentally unstable ex-wife who is fucking a newborn demon, as the Veronica. Both of them are played by Isabelle Adjani.
• Bishōnen Line: Each time the creature is seen it looks a little bit more human. It goes from being a fleshy shape attached to the bathroom wall, to a vaguely man-shaped mass of gore on the bed, to something resembling a cross between a deep sea fish and a newborn fetus, to a merman-like creature with tentacle arms and a tail, to a perfect copy of Mark with Black Eyes of Evil. When Anna is having sex with it near the end, she shouts "Almost!" repeatedly, implying that she's shaping the creature into a clone of Mark herself.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Mark has Icy Blue Eyes normally, but his completed doppelganger has totally black eyes.
• Blaming the Cuckold: Both Anna and her lover Heinrich blame Mark for the affair happening because he was away on business for so long.
• Blame the Paramour: Mark not only becomes furious at his wife Anna for her infidelity, he holds her lover Heinrich in contempt as well.
• Blatant Lies: Anna denies being unfaithful when Mark questions her.
• Blood from the Mouth:
  • Mark after being shot through the throat, combined with blood bubbling out of his neck.
  • Anna has blood dripping down from her nose and mouth after being hit by Mark during a fight.
• Bury Your Gays: The private detectives Emmanuel and Zimmerman were revealed to have been in a homosexual relationship together and both men died a violent death at the hands of Anna when they stumbled upon the creature hidden in the abandoned apartment.
• Calling Your Orgasms: As Anna locks eyes with Mark while having sex with the creature, she cries out "Almost!" repeatedly.
• Chekhov's Gun: At the beginning of the movie, Mark is asked by his business associates if the subject he was following still wears pink socks. At the end of the movie, he's shot by one of his former employers, who happens to wear pink socks, so it's implied that he unleashed the apocalypse we hear of in the ending.
• Compulsive Liar: Anna has been lying to Mark about her whereabouts. He catches on to her lies eventually and presses her about her location.
• Convenient Miscarriage: A dark example. In Mark's absence, Anna suffered a violent miscarriage in the subway tunnel. This is what led to her having a nervous breakdown and wanting a divorce.
• Crisis of Faith: Before her miscarriage in the subway, Anna is shown inside a church looking up to a statue of Jesus and pleading for answers.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Heinrich is brained with the lid of a toilet tank and then drowned in that same filthy, public toilet, after he'd already been stabbed and Driven to Madness by the thing in Helen's apartment. Truly there aren't many worse ways to go.
• Coitus Uninterruptus: Mark goes to the apartment and finds Anna having sex with the creature. Despite Mark's intrusion, they keep on going.
• Cosmic Horror Story: It's hard to say just what the fuck that thing in Anna's apartment is supposed to be, but whatever it is it's pure evil and its completion appears to herald the apocalypse.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When Mark tries to fight Heinrich after meeting him for the first time, Heinrich takes him out in about 3 hits while Mark flails ineffectually.
• Custody Battle: Because of Anna neglecting their son Bob, Mark tells her he is seeking sole custody of Bob while Anna will only be allowed to visit him.
• Deranged Dance: Anna's body movements during her nervous breakdown in the subway almost resemble an odd dance, thrashing her limbs and body around while screaming.
• Dance of Despair: Anna loses control of her body and limbs and she just moves around in violent thrashing fits as the demonic possession takes over her.
• Death of a Child: Bob drowns himself in the bathtub.
• Depraved Bisexual: Heinrich, being a bisexual swinger.
• Desk Sweep of Rage: Mark throws all the dishes and cutlery off his restaurant table when arguing with Anna over her affair.
• Disappeared Dad: Mark says he doesn't want to see Bob if Anna gets custody of him and this upsets her, saying that Bob needs his father.
• Divorce Assets Conflict: Mark asks Anna if she wants to keep their apartment or if she'll live with her lover Heinrich. Anna wants to keep the apartment.
• Downer Ending: Mark and Anna are both gunned down by the police while the doppelganger escapes. Bob drowns himself in the bathtub and the doppelganger waits behind the door as Helen witnesses World War III begin outside.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Many writers about Possession have paid attention to the motif of doppelgänger throughout the film. Both spouses die, but they are replaced by doubles, ideal models of husband and wife. Anna "grows" a double of Mark from the creature, an indefatigable lover who is always by her side. The real Mark finds a copy of Anna in the person of the school teacher Helen - she is a gentle character, and does not demand anything from Mark, being an "ideal housewife".
• Dub-Induced Plotline Change: The US cut of the film was edited down from 127 to 81 minutes and had the original score replaced with Ominous Latin Chanting in an attempt pass it off as a straight horror film.
• Dysfunction Junction: It's a divorce and a dysfunctional family we're talking about, after all.
• Eldritch Abomination: Anna's secret lover... demon... tentacle... thing. Turns out to be Mark's Doppelgänger in the end.
• Emasculated Cuckold: Mark becomes aware that his wife Anna is cheating on him with Heinrich and the creature and he is not happy about it. He becomes impotent during sex with Anna and he is further humiliated when he confronts Anna's lover Heinrich and loses the fight easily. Mark is even willing to give Anna full custody of their son Bob and leave just to avoid the humiliation of seeing Anna and her lover Heinrich together. And it doesn't do him any good once Mark catches Anna having sex with the creature after having sex with her a few days earlier.
• Fan Disservice: Isabelle Adjani is quite an attractive woman. To see her having sex with an Eldritch Abomination? Not hot.
• Freak Out: Anna in the subway. Ends with her spewing blood, pus, and slime from several orifices.
• Get Out!: Mark screams this to Anna after their argument in the cafe.
• Gainax Ending: Mark's doppelganger arrives at his house to do... something to Helen. Bob, apparently sensing the approaching evil, begs her not to open the door and then runs upstairs to drown himself in the bathtub. As Helen sees the doppelganger through the door, sirens and explosions are heard outside; Helen turns and looks directly into the camera as the doppelganger presses itself against the window. The end.
• Genre Shift: Starts as a divorce drama, but evolves into supernatural horror and eventually into Surreal Horror.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Happens to anyone who sees the creature. Heinrich appears to go temporarily blind after laying eyes on it.
• Hysterical Woman: Anna grows gradually unstable over the course of the film. With odd body movements, loud shrieking noises and homicidal behavior.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Both Mark and Anna have these, and with how many shots there are of both of them staring piercingly into the camera, the movie makes good use of them.
• Identical Stranger: Helen looks almost exactly like Anna, differing only in hair and eye color.
• Immodest Orgasm: Mark is able to locate Anna in the decrepit apartment building through her loud moans of pleasure.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Mark and Anna end up sleeping together after killing a few people, disposing of the bodies and cleaning the blood off of each other.
• Insane Equals Violent: Anna lashes out more physically at Mark and other people as her mental health becomes more and more unstable.
• Kick the Dog: After Anna confesses to Mark about her miscarriage in the subway, Mark just throws some harsh words in her face. "You look ugly. You’ve hardened. For the first time, you look vulgar to me.".
• Laughing Mad: Anna bursts out into long fits of unsettling mad laughter prior to her nervous breakdown and miscarriage in the subway.
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: After being asked for a divorce, Mark has trouble performing and becomes insecure about it. Not helping is the revelation that Anna has been having an affair with Heinrich and the creature and she tells Mark to his face that her lover is better at sex than he is.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Considering that Mark was away at work and Anna has been having an affair with Heinrich for a year, it's unknown if the baby Anna miscarried in the subway was her husband's or Heinrich's.
• Marionette Motion: Anna moves her limbs and body around in a stiff puppet like manner when she gets demonically possessed. When she narrowly avoids getting hit by truck out on the streets and when she has her nervous breakdown and subsequent miscarriage in the subway.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The film's thick symbolism prevents most critical viewers from interpreting the film literally, but that leaves an open interpretation as to what exactly Mark's "doppelganger" is. Is the Eldritch Abomination a production of Mark's psychosis, his warped viewing of Anna's adulterous lover? Is it Anna's delusion, her interpretation of the perfect version of Mark? A broader allegory for the nuclear spectre of the Cold War? Or, if we choose to view it literally, is it truly an Eldritch Abomination, and the entire story is one psychologically monstrous Cosmic Horror Story? The film never denies any of these perspectives, and it's important to note that multiple other characters corrobate Mark's seemingly delusional fantasies.
• Mess of Woe: Mark has his hotel room unkempt with beer bottles on the floor. Mark then returns to find his home in quite a mess and his son left alone covered in food stains. Anna is unable to keep both the apartments she has clean, with clothes all over the place and food everywhere.
• Mind Screw: It's all an allegory for divorce.
• Modest Orgasm: Anna lets out a quiet mousy gasp when she has sex with Mark after killing people.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Mark murders Anna's lover Heinrich to get Anna back into his life. When Anna shows Mark that her lover the creature is now a human look-alike doppelganger of him, Mark attempts to shoot the creature but he gets gunned down by the police.
• Parental Neglect: Anna neglects her son Bob, leaving him all alone in the apartment while she is away with her lover.
• Plot-Inciting Infidelity: What starts the whole plot after all.
• Private Detective: Mark engages one to find out more about Anna. He meets a bad end when he gets too pushy about entering her apartment, and ends up running right into the creature.
• Psychosexual Horror: The movie starts as a rather grounded drama about an unraveling marriage, but it takes a hard left turn into this territory when it's revealed that the female protagonist, Anna, has been having sex with this weird, fleshy... thing that lives in an abandoned apartment and gradually starts looking more human as the film progresses.
• Replacement Goldfish: Anna considers her eventually fully-formed demonic creature lover to being a superior replacement to her husband Mark as he satisfies her unmet sexual needs and Mark finds a replacement for his wife Anna in his son's teacher Helen who is kind to him and fulfills his need for an obedient housewife.
• Returning the Wedding Ring: After having another fight, Mark asks Anna for the wedding ring and wrist watch back.
• Right Through the Wall: Heinrich says that his mother is at his home all the time. Even when he is having sex with Anna.
• Rule of Symbolism: According to this theory (beware: spoilers ahead!), the movie is an allegory of divorce, and there's subtle Cold War undertones here and there that become more obvious in the ending.
• Scenery Gorn: Berlin is a worn-down, desolate wasteland of a city in this film. Even calm domestic interiors become this after Mark and Anna's arguments cause them to throw trash and broken furniture everywhere.
• Screaming Woman: Anna screams a lot whenever she's fighting with Mark, murdering people or having a nervous breakdown during her demonic possession and miscarriage in the subway.
• Spit-Trail Kiss: Mark and Anna have one as they lay dying on the stairs from gunshot wounds. In their case the spit mixes with blood.
• Straight Gay: You wouldn't tell the two detectives are a gay couple until they reveal it.
• Surreal Horror: The movie is a steadily accelerating descent into a hellish nightmare. At the end it's hardly recognizable as the tense divorce drama it started out as.
• Third-Option Love Interest: Anna prefers her third lover the creature over her first lover Heinrich and her husband Mark.
• Together in Death: Mark and Anna die together to a hail of police bullets. They share one last kiss before Anna shoots them both through the spine.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Heinrich's mother seemed a very nice old lady in a world going mad; she commits suicide because she can't stand losing her son.
• The Unfair Sex: During a conversation with Margit about Anna's lover Hendrich, Mark sarcastically admits that the divorce and the affair is all his fault. Everyone blames me Mark for everything that has happened. Even though Anna is truly in the wrong for cheating.
• Villain Protagonist: By the last third of the film, Mark has killed Heinrich and is actively covering up Anna's other murders. It's clear by this point he only cares about being with her again.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Anna murders the two private detectives and her lover Heinrich when they discover her third secret lover the creature hiding in her second apartment.
• Visit by Divorced Dad: Mark lampshades this during an argument with Anna, citing how awkward it will be for both him and their child Bob when his dad has to become "sunday Daddy" while Bob gets raised by Anna and her lover Heinrich.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Anna vomits white fluid as she suffers a miscarriage in the subway tunnel.
• Wham Line: Anna is responsible for two extraordinarily disturbing ones. The first one, when Zimmerman discovers the creature in Anna's apartment and then he (and the audience) learn who Anna's third lover is
  Anna: He's very tired, he made love to me all night. He's still unfinished, you know?
  • And when Anna reunites with Mark at the end, she brings the creature along with her and Mark (and the audience) sees what the creature has finally grown into...A complete human look-alike Doppelgänger of Mark.
  Anna: It's finished, I wanted you to see!
• Wham Shot: In-universe. Mark finding Anna having sex with the creature in her apartment.
• World of Ham: Could be called Ham: The Movie. The vast majority of scenes containing Mark, Anna, and Heinrich contain intense amounts of yelling, exaggerated gestures, and uncomfortable amounts of out-of-place touching. All three of these characters often engage in frequent spasmodic fits, intense physical reactions to emotion, and temper tantrums, though none stand up to the 5 minute long segment of Anna screaming and throwing herself around a subway tunnel, completely by herself. Just about the only time you see reasonable, level-headed behavior is when Mark is interacting with Bob.
• Wretched Hive: Berlin is depicted as an almost humanless concrete desert, with most of the little human interaction that occurs being crazy and violent. Oh, and did we mention the ghost of the Cold War creeping through the city?
• Yank the Dog's Chain: After killing Anna's lover Hendrich, helping Anna dispose of the bodies, and then having sex with her, Mark thinks he finally has everything back to the way he wanted. Or so he thinks. Then he finds Anna having sex with the creature and he is devastated.

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