"No Body is Safe" in Possessor. This science fiction psychological horror film written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg. Elite, corporate assassin Tasya Vos uses brain-implant technology. Vos takes control of other people’s bodies to execute high profile targets. As she sinks deeper into her latest assignment Vos becomes trapped inside a mind that threatens to obliterate her.
There are two versions of the script. Cronenberg has said there is a possibility of a second movie down the line, one that would encompass the material that didn't make it into this film. Cronenberg said that José Delgado's 1970s book Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society, his past short film Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You served and the films of Dario Argento, particularly Opera (1987) served as inspirations. By early April 2019, Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean and Jennifer Jason Leigh were cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced and filming took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Most of the special effects in the film were done practically, with an effort to use as little VFX work as possible. The hallucination scenes' effects in particular were done in-camera. Cronenberg credits his effects specialists, Dan Martin and Derek Liscoumb, and his longtime cinematographer Karim Hussain for being able to pull off convincing visuals with a minimum of CGI.
The film stars Riseborough, Abbott, Sutherland, Middleton, Bean and Jason Leigh. Riseborough is an ideal Cronenberg heroine, projecting a personality that is broken, wary and capable of obsessiveness. Leigh, who in the past loved to play the absolute cynic with curled lip and gutteral voice, has never looked and sounded a doomwatcher.
Here, Cronenberg is a provocateur only to a point - boldly striding past boundaries of comfort but getting the heebie-jeebies upon approaching true profundity. But he wasn't too far from figuring out which incisions could cut the deepest. Cronenberg's most visionary and audacious film up to the time of its making, the film is a fascinating rumination on humanity, technology, entertainment, sex, and politics that is virtually incomprehensible on first viewing. Like his father, Brandon Cronenberg doesn't have the stylistic resources to match the forcefulness of his ideas, but his movies remain in the mind for the pull of their private obsessions. Everything in the film calls for the viewer seduced by the film's proposal to irretrievably surrender to its overwhelming visual personality. Never coherent and frequently pretentious, the film remains an audacious attempt to place obsessive personal images before a popular audience. Though the film finally grows grotesque and a little confused, it begins very well and sustains its cleverness for a long while. Thematically, it connects easily with most other titles in the Cronenberg oeuvre, with the added treat of having been released far ahead of its time. The film continues Cronenberg's growth out of more obvious horror realms and ups the stakes with heavier philosophical entreaties for his characters to endure.
Simon says Possessor receives:
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