A Horror Classic. If you ever wanna know what actors talk about when the best ones "Surrender themselves to the character" to achieve the highest level possible, look no further than the subway scene with Isabelle Adjani. One of the best performances I've seen. Really just amazing across the board but she is just...wow. Words don't even describe how disturbing her portrayal is. Direction is just first rate. I love how there is hardly any medium shots at all. The camerawork is so sophiscated and the creature design is amazing. The editing and pacing is masterful. The performances, fights, breakdowns, are just spellbinding. You can't look away. This is a very open ended interpretation of themes of divorce, fading love, breakdown of family, how we see people vs. what really is, and even the Cold War to an extent. This is sort of like a Polanksi flick if you mixed it with a hint of David Cronenberg. This defintely is something that you need to watch more than once to continue to absorb everything and has artgouse elements to it too. I do have to say it can be a little too open and abstract for my taste and I wish it had a bit more structure to it like a Lynch film to better organize it. And I don't think the Cold War overhang and ending don't add much and are just kind of put there just to be artsy. There's already soooo much here to explore and digest. But that being said it's one of the best horror films of the 80's and truly unique. Anyone who is a fan of horror, the director, any actors in this, psychological thrillers, or even arthouse type of flicks should check this out.

Absolutely unhinged. Loud and bizarre. Two of the worst people you'll never meet spiral into a twisted nightmare. What I imagine happens to people on bath salts.

This film has terrible production quality, the filming is bad, the special effects are bad, who ever did the sound really phoned it in, probably from mars. I felt the acting was absurd. It was also very visually dull. I watched the English dubbed version and it was a joke. The timing of the dubbing was way off. The voice actors that did the English dubbing all had ridicules weird voices. The dialogue was filled with mistakes and was largely unintelligible. I disliked the movie but read all the favorable reviews so I figured I would try it again this time with subtitles to try and get around the terrible dubbing. The subtitles were worse than the dubbing. It was almost like they used google translator and converted it through every language on the planet compounding the mistakes exponentially. It seemed like it didn’t know which genre it wanted to be, monster movie, drama, thriller with no thrills, or a shoot’em up. It failed on all accounts. The characters were unlikeable and behaved in extremely bizarre over the top ways. People just don’t interact with other people the way they do in this film making it awkward and uninteresting to watch. Very boring. I have disliked other films before but I have never been truly annoyed at one the way I have with this. A film that irritates both the eyes and ears. This film gets both rave and terrible reviews leading me to believe there might be two films with the same name and people are reviewing totally separate films.

An exercise in excruciating pain with origins both in reality and fantasy, 'Possession' is a tale bound to provoke through its multitude of layers of surrealism. Depravity has never been more visceral than this, almost brought to an animal state of being.

Il y a un délire mais je l'ai pas capté

Absolute laughable mess.

The only English language film from European art-house director Andrzej Żuławski, Possession’s level of violence and the controversial subject matter evidentially ruffled a few feathers back in 1981, and its only in subsequent years that’s its reputation has grown. It has a very distinctive directing style and presentation, with camerawork designed to make you feel like a character in the scenes, and cinematography that aims to replicate the experience of slowly losing your mind. Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani turn in the most intense performances of their careers, something they themselves have admitted. While watching it, I was thinking how exhausting it must have been to do these scenes over and over again, but the results are on screen for all to see. There’s times where the actors go way over the top, the most notable example being the subway sequence, where Adjani overreacts so ridiculously that even Nicolas Cage would be telling her to tone it down. It’s not a mental breakdown, its a parody of a mental breakdown. Some parts of it are hard to take seriously for this reason, and the film loses steam towards the end, as if the director has used up all his good ideas but still had time to fill. But the majority of it is a compelling and intense character study of a couple at odds, unsure of how to process their emotions and taking everything out on each other. It’s not a film I’d be keen to rewatch, but watching it is certainly a unique experience, so that’s something to be appreciated.

While Possession is certainly one-of-a-kind, I can't help but ultimately feel rather disappointed upon viewing, a confusing drama of murder, horror and intrigue, though it's all attractively directed. Andrzej Żuławski channels his personal heartbreak into primal horror, an overwhelmingly messy and gruelling watch even after it deals its hand. Its imaginative plot about the disintegration of marriage via eldrich horror is often overshadowed by stilted dialogue and unintentionally laughable performance from Isabelle Adjani. It's overly exaggerated with rarely a moment of cohesion, every movement feels like a convulsion, every reaction an explosion, every interaction a fight, every line of dialogue a scream. It gets tiresome very quickly. Sam Niel was my bright spot; I could watch him in anything, he commits to the film's ridiculousness and turns it into brilliance. The lack of incidental music further heightened the film's rough pacing, despite the lovely camerawork. Ultimately Possession is an oddly engrossing, energetic and bracing experience that takes no prisoners but is equally bizarrely funny in a bad way. Mark did nothing wrong.

Wow! This movie is a must see for everybody. At first, it was a little slow and I didn’t enjoy it much but as it progressed it started to blow my mind. The acting is superb the creature Was amazing I was told that 90 minutes were cut from the film. I wish I could see it and it’s entirety one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

wasn’t even the same movie lmfaooo

I don't get 'art.' Some good body horror and uncomfortable scenes but runs out of steam quick.

this movie had so much potential but it was basically 124 minutes of the couple arguing and literally nothing happened except at the end when she got possesed it was painfully slow i just couldn’t like it specifically for that reason

I just watched this for the first time this year. What a stunning, original, amazing, grueling, horrific, wonderful movie. The director, screenwriter, actors, all of them dough straight down into the depths of hell to make this movie. Thank you.

mesmerizing madness. just as bizarre as everyone told me it was. i won’t be forgetting this one anytime soon.

I watched it 'cause I found out Rob Pattinson was going to produce a reboot.... I didn't understand who was having a mental breakdown and/or WTF was going on.... But, I kind of loved it.

It's different, I guess somewhat avant garde, but too much screaming and shouting for my liking.

Extremely emotional movie with little depth. I understood what the point is. A couple breaking up. But there are better ways to show it on film. I give it 2 stars because at least the director tries desperately to be original.

Let me be clear, this shouldn't work (the vague plot mechanics, the attention getting cinematography, the extreme and unreal performances) and yet it somehow achieves just about everything it sets out to do (i.e. explore the emotional realms of a collapsing relationship) and does so in unforgettable ways.

Can't believe I watched this ro the end. No storyline that made any sense. Characters were absurd and inconsistent and acted without any logic to what they did. The movie was a hodgepodge of scenes for "shock" value with little originality. The real shock to me was that so many critics rated it so highly.

I have no idea why this movie is rated so highly on both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. I thought it was weird, mostly boring, and horrible. I do NOT recommend it.