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The Possession is a 2012 American supernatural horror film directed by Ole Bornedal, written by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, and produced by Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, and J. R. Young. It stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Natasha Calis, Grant Show, Madison Davenport, and Matisyahu. The story, based on the 2004 Los Angeles Times article "A Jinx in a Box?" by Leslie Gornstein, is about the allegedly haunted dybbuk box.
The film was shot in 2011. Parts of the film were filmed at a former mental institution, Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam. Bornedal cited films such as The Exorcist as an inspiration, praising their subtlety.
It was released in the United States on August 31, 2012, with the film premiering at the Film4 FrightFest and received mixed reviews from film critics, while audience reception has been positive.
Basketball coach Clyde Brenek and his wife Stephanie are finishing up their divorce to go their separate ways. Their daughters 10-year-old Emily "Em" and teenage Hannah, help Clyde settle into his new home during the weekend. At a yard sale, Em discovers a box, the same one from the middle-aged woman's living room. While holding the box, Em looks into a window of the woman's home and sees her lying in bed, now wrapped in bandages, and being attended to by a nurse. The woman looks out to see Em holding the box and screams in horror, startling Em. Clyde buys the box for her, and they later find that there seems to be no way to open it. That night, she hears whispering coming from the box. She is able to open it, and finds a tooth, a dead moth, a wooden figurine, and a ring, which she begins to wear. Em becomes solitary, and her behavior becomes increasingly disturbing, even becoming possessive over the box. At school, she violently attacks a classmate when he takes her box, resulting in a meeting with Clyde, Stephanie, the principal, and her teacher. Em's teacher recommends that she spend time away from the box, so it is left in the classroom. That night, curious about the mysterious noises from the box, the teacher tries to open it, but a malevolent force violently throws her out a window, murdering her.
Em tells Clyde about an invisible woman who lives in her box who says that Em is "special". Alarmed by her behavior, Clyde attempts to dispose of the box. During their next weekend at Clyde's, Em gets progressively more upset with the disappearance of the box and accuses Clyde of abusing her. Em flees the house and recovers the box. The voice from the box begins conversing with her in the Polish language, before seemingly possessing her. Stephanie finds out about the abuse accusations and has a judge prevent the children from being with their father.
Clyde takes the box to a university professor who tells him that it is a dybbuk box that dates back to the 1920s or '30s; it was used to contain a dybbuk, a dislocated spirit as powerful as a demon. Clyde enters Em's room and reads Psalm 91 until a dark but invisible force throws the Tanakh across the room. Clyde then travels to a Hasidic Judaism community in Brooklyn and learns from the rabbi Tzadok that the possession has three main stages; in the third stage, the dybbuk latches onto its human host, becoming one entity with it. The only way to defeat the dybbuk is to lock it back inside the box via a exorcism. Upon further examination on the box, Tzadok learns that the dybbuk's name is "Abyzou", or "Taker of Children".
Later that evening, Em violently attacks her mother when Stephanie discovers her gorging herself like an animal out of the refrigerator. Stephanie's boyfriend Brett suggests that Em be examined by a psychologist.
The next morning, Brett prepares to take Em to the psychologist. However, when Em stares malevolently at Brett, his mouth begins gushing blood and his teeth begin falling out, causing him to drive away frantically. Em has a seizure on the front lawn and is taken to the hospital for an MRI. During the procedure, Stephanie and Hannah are horrified when they see the dybbuk's face in the MRI scans next to Em's heart. Clyde and Tzadok join the family at the hospital and attempt to conduct an exorcism, which results in a struggle between Clyde and the dybbuk. Clyde survives the attack, but the dybbuk is passed from Em to him. Tzadok performs a successful exorcism; Abyzou emerges from Clyde and crawls back into the box. The family is reunited, with Clyde and Stephanie's love rekindled.
Tzadok drives away with the box in Clyde's vehicle but the car is hit by a truck, killing him. The box lands safely some distance from the wreckage, and Abyzou's whispering is heard from it.
Bornedal stated that he was drawn to The Possessions script, having seen it as more of an allegory for divorce than as a true horror film. Actors Sedgwick and Morgan were brought in to play the Breneks; Morgan chose to participate after seeing Calis' audition tape. Parts of the movie were filmed at a former mental institution, Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam.
Jason Haxton, the then-owner of the supposed dybbuk box discussed in the original "A Jinx in a Box?" article on which the film was based, offered to send it to producer Sam Raimi, who was interested yet reluctant. Raimi laughingly told an Entertainment Weekly interviewer, "I didn't want anything to do with it. I'm scared of the thing." He also told the interviewer that he was raised in a Conservative Jewish home: "You don't hear about dybbuks when you go to synagogue. I know the demonic lore of The Exorcist. But what does my faith believe about demonic possession? ... The stories chilled me to the bone." Jeffrey Dean Morgan felt similarly: "In the research I did, I started getting creeped out. My girlfriend was like, 'Let's just make sure that we don't actually go near the real Dybbuk Box.'"
"We were like, 'Hell, no,'" recalls screenwriter Juliet Snowden. "'We don't want to see it. Don't send us a picture of it.'"
Director Ole Bornedal said, "Some really weird things happened. I've never stood underneath a neon light before that wasn't lit, that all of a sudden exploded. The worst thing was, five days after we wrapped the movie, all the props burned. This storage house in Vancouver burned down to the ground, and the fire department does not know the cause. I'm not a superstitious man, and I would like to say, 'Yeah, it's just a coincidence.'"
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film stars, writing, " The Exorcist has influenced a lot of films, and The Possession is one of the better ones". Richard Roeper also gave the movie a B+.
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