A good movie only needs one trippy, mercenary, something-you’ve-never-seen-before sequence to be memorable, and this exceptional movie has three of them. When it’s operating at full strength, which is continuously, Possessor is as visionary and violent as a Lord Infamous record.
The opening sequence of Possessor is a seduction and an infiltration (think Ghost in the Shell). Textures, surfaces, colors, vibrance — if you keep someone aesthetically impressed, it takes them a while to be morally critical, and Possessor hits the ground running with luxurious dazzle and gouts of blood, using very charged images so viscerally upsetting that it takes a couple of subsequent scenes before you can even fully process what you’ve witnessed. Writer-director Brandon Cronenberg has a genetic predisposition to tales of renegade corporations and technology realigning the pathways of the body, and he does the family reputation proud with this unrestrainedly vicious and ultimately existentially sad masterpiece of the not-too-distant future.
Imagine if that deathless but not-dominant trope of the antihero hitman had never waned after the ’90s, but had in fact defined the rise in the boom-and-bust cycle of modern technical innovation. If Uber and Tesla and Academi and Palantir had built their platforms on murder rather than disruption (but wait, Academi actually did build their model on murder), one might-could get a feel for the world of Possessor. This is a universe where profit flouts law, and quite possibly defines it.
Trematon is the company that makes all this possible. Unbound by law and capable of taking scavenger capitalism to its logical extreme, they have found a remarkable niche in the business world, undertaking targeted assassinations carried out indirectly by unaware third parties. It’s the grotesqueness of hedge-fund capitalism, but with a relish for up-close and personal acts of violence. And Trematon’s ace in the hole is Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough of Mandy and January’s near-unwatchable but structurally fascinating sequel to The Grudge), with the palest straw-white hair that blends with her sweater of choice. She has a reputation, in both senses of the word, because she is out of her mind. She has psychopathic tendencies that would demand psychiatric intervention in any normal world. But she is also literally out of her mind, inhabiting the cerebral cortex and nervous system of another for money, “and shares.”
The first time we see her out of the Trematon labs, she’s standing in front of the housing bloc where her estranged, giant, hairy academic of a husband and son live, practicing normal human small talk (shades of Terry O’Quinn in The Stepfather) and hurtling through mental exercises to keep her urge to kill separate from familial obligations. This film is very interested in disassembling the excuse that so often is offered for immoral behavior in the pursuit of capital — that it’s being done for one’s family, as if that’s a valid reason. When it comes to justifying the nefarious ends of capitalism, family is an abstraction that simply allows the guilty to end difficult conversations.
The process of killing is methodical and regimented; there are so many different people involved at every step of the way. The physical interface has echoes of Cronenberg senior’s eXistenZ’s UmbyPod; another technological marvel of the future driven by analog tech, in this case the highest-end experimental recording technology/stereo system imaginable in 1965 powering the murder-fueled transfer of power behind closed doors.
Big moody colorscapes and smooth surfaces abound. Cinematographer Karim Hussain (Hobo With a Shotgun) does incredible work here. Also, nothing makes me happier than when Kaniehtiio Horn (Tanis from Letterkenny, Mohawk, one of the bright spots in the "You thought True Blood was trashy?" mess of Hemlock Grove) turns up in something. She is vibrant and alive, and suffused with so much passion that she can’t help but knock a lot of the supporting cast off the screen. Her character Reeta is a corporate party girl and an ethical nonmonogamist, and Horn’s is a performance that finds the classic Cronenbergian subtext in the human/machine interface of vaping.
Running things is the divine Jennifer Jason Leigh as Girder, the brunch margarita assassin handler with the corporate bangs and the troublingly perceptive mind. She recognizes the pluses and minuses of her star creative, working with Tasya to achieve the kind of results that keep the least scrupulous movers and shakers willing to pay top dollar. “It’s important not to withhold,” Girder says, speaking both to keeping secrets and to a propensity for violence. In Girder’s office, debriefing takes place as the Highest of Definition crime is projected on the wall like an art installation. David Bowie’s Nathan Adler persona would approve. The opening sequence has paid off, and a new client lurks on the horizon.
The new mission is relatively simple. Tasya is to infiltrate the mind of recovering coke dealer/worker drone Colin (Christopher Abbott), who is engaged to Ava Parse (Tuppence Middleton). Ava’s father John (Sean Bean) is the target. So all Tasya has to do is destabilize Colin’s reputation with his friends, cause a public scene with erratic behavior, and then methodically liquidate John and Ava. A clean tragedy with no loose ends thanks to a nasty relapse and flipping out the infiltrated’s lights on the way out. Tasya and Trematon both get cash and shares in Parse Industries thanks to the mysterious and unseen family member signing the checks (elevating things to a level perhaps even more evil than contemporary business, though who can say at this point in time). This is a whole new level of espionage, and this film is resolute that there can be no moral assassin.
But as Tasya slips into the mind of Colin, those rough edges become much more of a problem. And now there are two consciences drifting around in this man’s skull. Abbott’s performance is superb, particularly when he is playing Colin as under Tasya’s control. She’s been one of the premier murder-artists for years now, and being forced into doing time as a cubicle drone demolishes every bulwark she’s built in her own mind to keep her shit together. “The Mine,” Parse Industries’ observation area where voyeurism is merely a means to the end of data mining curtain patterns, is simultaneously crowded, isolated, observed and free, which is exactly how every company would like the future to look.
So the battle for the future is being fought between a mad creative and a recovering corporate drone inside a single mind. There is no law to seek out. There is no human decency to rely on, because that’s been bred out of the species by centuries of unfettered capitalism. Just the baser instincts and whatever you will bring to the table. Blood will spill. Bodies will be altered. And you’re not ready for where it goes. This film is gory in unexpected ways and sexually provocative to an extent that feels unusual in the past decade of genre cinema.
If Cronenberg lost control of the tone at any moment, the end result would be unwatchably disturbing. And he does not lose control. In this world, where the plague holds sway and money is exchanged to grease the wheels of a society careening toward a solid cliff face with luxury living painted across it Wile E. Coyote trompe l’œil style, it’s good to have a Cronenberg laying it all out. And Possessor is the best film I’ve seen in 2020.
