Taglines: No body is safe.
Possessor Movie Storyline. Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is a corporate agent who uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies, driving them to commit assassinations for the benefit of the company. While she has a special gift for the work, her experiences on these jobs have caused a dramatic change in her, and in her own life, she struggles to suppress violent memories and urges. As her mental strain intensifies, she begins to lose control, and soon she finds herself trapped in the mind of a man (Christopher Abbott) whose identity threatens to obliterate her own.
Possessor is a 2020 science fiction psychological horror film[5] written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg. An international co-production of Canada and the United Kingdom, the film stars Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Possessor had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2020, and was released in the United States and Canada on October 2, 2020, by Neon and Elevation Pictures. It was released in the United Kingdom on November 27, 2020, by Signature Entertainment. The film was particularly praised for its originality and the performances from Riseborough and Abbott.
About the Story
In an alternate 2008, Tasya Vos is an assassin who takes control of others’ bodies to carry out her hits. Through an implant installed in the unwitting host’s brain, Vos can use a special machine to insert her consciousness into their minds. She returns to her own body by forcing the host to commit suicide at the end of each job.
Due to the amount of time she spends imitating other people, Vos struggles with increasing detachment from her own identity and cannot fully separate her work from her interactions with her husband, Michael, and son, Ira. She “practices” assuming her normal persona the same way she practices impersonating her hosts. Thoughts of violence haunt her during ordinary domestic life, such as when putting Ira to bed and having sex with Michael.
Vos’s handler, retired assassin Girder, is critical of her desire to remain connected to her family and expresses the belief that Vos would be a better killer without personal attachments. In a debriefing session meant to reconnect her with her real identity, Vos sorts through a series of objects associated with personal memories and pauses on a butterfly that she pinned and framed as a child. She tells Girder she feels guilty for killing it.
Despite her fragile mental state and fatigue with her work, Vos agrees to perform a major hit on wealthy CEO John Parse and his daughter, Ava, by possessing Ava’s fiancé, Colin Tate. The hit is only a partial success: Ava dies, but Parse survives. Vos attempts to flee the scene by forcing Tate to shoot himself but discovers she cannot make him pull the trigger.
Tate instead stabs himself in the skull in an act of rebellion. This damages the implant, and Vos discovers she cannot leave Tate’s body or overpower his will. Tate, regaining control, does not know why he killed his girlfriend or why he has begun to experience false, fragmented memories of another person’s — Vos’s — life.
The traumatized and disoriented Tate flees from the crime scene to his friend Reeta’s apartment. He kills Reeta while struggling with dissociative memories of the hit on Parse and Ava. Eddie, another employee from Vos’s company, arrives at the apartment to help her regain control and complete Tate’s suicide. The attempt fails. Vos is still unable to make Tate kill himself. Instead, Tate becomes aware of her presence inside his body; his consciousness overpowers hers in a psychic confrontation, giving him access to memories of her husband, child and home. He kills Eddie during their internal battle.
Possessor (2020)
Directed by: Brandon Cronenberg
Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rossif Sutherland, Sean Bean, Ayesha Mansur Gonsalves, Gage Graham-Arbuthnot, Gabrielle Graham, Kathy Maloney
Screenplay by: Brandon Cronenberg
Production Design by: Rupert Lazarus
Cinematography by: Karim Hussain
Film Editing by: Matthew Hannam
Costume Design by: Aline Gilmore
Set Decoration by: Brittany Morrison
Art Direction by: Kent McIntyre
Music by: Jim Williams
MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody disturbing violence, strong sexual content, some graphic nudity, language and brief drug use.
Distributed by: Elevation Pictures, Neon
Release Date: January 25, 2020 (Sundance), October 2, 2020 (United States), October 9, 2020 (Canada)
Views: 79
