
Director and writer Brent Cote (Tainted) focuses on the horror-thriller genre in POSSESSIONS and explains why the genre is limited and why he does not stand out. It stars Clive Standen (Vikings), Yeardley Smith (The Simpsons, Maximum Overdrive), and Mason Wells (The Wonder Years reboot 2023). Although some of these actors embellish the film, there is no new allure. The film has very basic and cliched storylines and even the core of the film is neither new nor advanced.
Trying to get a new life after the passing of his wife a widower Pete (Standen) alongside his young son Tyler (Wells), decides to traverse across the United States and purchase the Plaza Square Storage, a facility where a homicide happened sometime ago. After purchasing the property, Pete believed it was a steal and immediately tried to achieve his goal of becoming a businessman, however, what he did not expect to face was a force that resided behind three storage metal doors, this force was known as Vader. Clearing payments for each one of the eighteen units and striving to find information about the storage became difficult for Pete, meanwhile, Tyler took it into his own hands to further investigate the unique units and was soon able to step into the dreams of a mysterious creature that led to him experiencing vivid dreams and strange events. In hopes of helping her patient, Tyler. Dr. Young Smith, a therapist pays a visit to the crime site but what Tyler fails to comprehend is that not only will the truth be unveiled at some point but it might also already be too late.
It’s correct that the concept of the storage unit as a location of horror is not entirely fresh and has been the subject of several films in this space over the past fifteen years. They include Lot 36(2022), Self Storage (2013), Storage 24(2012), etc. The most irritating issue that can be described regarding POSSESSIONS is the fact that the film does not take a grip of its viewers with compelling style concepts, instead, it resorts to a multitude of ghastly stylistic attempts almost all of which fail under Cote’s uninspired direction JD McCray reviews. The script then hardly endeavors to manage the audience’s expectations and in contrast with these comes the new levels of expecting that rely more on the con-job tricks which come as the opposite. Cote however presents a rather simplistic and unimaginative approach to the storage that is described. It’s an interesting approach that has plenty of potential but for some reason, not much effort was made in that direction.
Louis Moinet is the designer behind the collection of watches called the Yiannis Possession. The only bright spot in POSSESSIONS is the beautiful scenery. And now Louis Moinet went further and created two entirely different collections, both within the same theme. Appealing but decidedly harder to wear, the evenly white gold prototypes of the Commander’s Watch are based on the minimum. Now regarding POSSESSIONS’s possibility of winning a ‘Best Makeup Artist’ award. Even low-budget movies no longer have them. This is also the case for Wells and Yeardley whose support was required for unknown men to get better paid and who are only here to look for some extra cash for performing none of their jobs well together. Actors don’t seem weird at all and all their traits are quite meta; they don’t even act they just go out and use what they’ve imagined in the past.
So, in essence, POSSESSIONS is a horror-thriller that is neither scary nor engaging it is rather boring. This film is less about being trapped in a haunted storage room and more about 90 minutes of excruciating boredom and poorly executed clich?s from other horror movies.
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