DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Andrzej Żuławski
Starring Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Heinz Bennent, Margit Carstensen
Release date 25 October 2010

Mark (Neill) returns to his home in Berlin after undertaking a secret mission for a shady government agency. He finds that his wife, Anna (Adjani), seems distant and increasingly crazed. After discovering she’s having an affair with the karate-trained philosophy-spouting Heinrich (Bennent), Mark is distraught. Then Anna leaves Heinrich to have a relationship with a tentacled monster...

Though the majority of horror films work by tweaking an established formula with varying degrees of success, the genre is littered with some bonkers one-offs. Possession is arthouse splatter at its most outré; an exploration of relationships, politics, madness and monsters that is quite unlike anything made before or since.

The narrative is pieced together in an almost hallucinatory manner, with Żuławski employing the fragmented editing of Nicolas Roeg and the surreal plot tangents of Alejandro Jodorowsky. It’s not often clear what’s going on or why, but Neill and especially Adjani give exceptionally powerful performances as the couple tearing each other and themselves apart as the world around them appears to be doing the same.

The disturbing imagery – especially Anna’s horrific subway miscarriage – earned the film a place on the UK Video Nasties list in the early ‘80s, while the sight of the Berlin Wall forever lurking in the background creates an oppressive, sinister atmosphere. But even the incidental scenes are baffling – witness a leering passenger stealing a banana from Anna’s bag on the train or a woman inexplicably dancing in the street. By the time Anna begins an affair with a tentacled monster (impressively realised by effects legend Carlo Rambaldi) it almost seems normal.

Frustrating, fascinating and stunning to look at, Possession isn’t exactly easy viewing and Żuławski treats his subject matter with deadly solemnity, but this is a strange, essential slice of art-horror.

The DVD comes with a French interview with Żuławski who discusses his event-filled career (including how the Polish authorities shut down work on his ambitious SF epic On the Silver Globe) and an excellent documentary on the making of Possession. Żuławski and co-writer Frederic Tuten discuss the political themes behind the film, while producer Marie-Laure Reyre remembers how it was pitched to Paramount as “A film about a woman who fucks an octopus”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the studio passed. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 8/10
Possession lies somewhere between an unwatchable ordeal and a mad masterpiece; an original and fascinating experience.