Possession (1981 film)

A still from the infamous subway tunnel breakdown scene of Possession (1981 film)....

Possession (1981), AKA The Night the Screaming Stops

Summary

"She created a monster as her secret lover!" A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.

Details

• Release Date: 1981
• Country/Language: France/Germany/Poland, English French and German
• Genres/Technical: Horror, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Art/Experimental
• Runtime: 2 hr 24 min
• Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen
• Director: Andrzej Zulawski
• Writer: Andrzej Zulawski
• Producer/Production Co: Gaumont, Oliane Productions, Marianne Productions
• View Trailer: (link)
• TVTropes: (link)
• IMDB Page: (link)

Ratings

MPAA Ratings

• Rated: R (Violence, Adult Content, Nudity, Sexual Content, Profanity)

Tentacle Ratings

A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:

• Ss___ (One and a Half Tentacles: Barely Lovecraftian; vaguely similar in tone)

With some of the art/experimental aspects of the films categorized by their "eldritch locations", a Tentacle Monster, and perhaps a sort of Lovecraftian fear of alien miscegenation, the film will likely hit the "Lovecraftian" buttons of a variety of all but the most "Lovecraftian purist" viewers.

Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.

Reviews

Review Links:

• Horror-Movie-a-Day, (link) - "The greatest compliment I can give the film is that I actually forgot I was watching a "horror movie" for the first 45 minutes or whatever it is until the monster first appears."
• Richard Scheib at the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review (1/5 Stars) (link) - "Andrzej Zulawski feels like he has much he wants to say. Symbolism – The Berlin Wall representing divisions, everybody seeks perfected clone versions of the other – often looms as though he is pointing a big arrow at it. However, what he is trying to make a film about is not at all clear – marriage breakup? an out-and-out horror film? monsters from the Id? There is so much going on that everything eventually collapses into symbolic overkill, not to mention narrative incoherence."

Synopsis (SPOILERS)

 Spoiler Section (Highlight to Read)
After Anna reveals to her husband, Mark, that she is having an affair, she leaves him and their son. Mark is devastated, and seeks out Heinrich, the man who cuckolded him, only to receive a beating. After a series of violent confrontations between Mark and Anna, Mark hires a private investigator to follow her. Anna descends into madness, and it's soon clear that she is hiding a much bigger secret - one that is both inexplicable and shocking: a lover that might not even be human....

Notes

Associated Mythos Elements

• race: Tentacle Monster