DVD Daily 1/23/13

"The Possession" (2012)
Staring: Natasha Calis, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick

Synopsis: (Courtesy of IMDB) A young girl buys an antique box at a yard sale, unaware that inside the collectible lives a malicious ancient spirit.  The girl's father teams up with his ex-wife to find a way to end the curse upon their child.

When I first saw the trailer for "The Possession" one thought instantly came to mind, "really another one."  It seems common place today that when you want to release a horror film you make it about demon possession.  So avoid I did.

Well I was lucky enough to place this into my DVD player, and well.....

Surprise!! It is exactly what I thought it would be, a cliched predictable, sometimes laughable film, coated in just enough entertainment to make it digestible.  How it made so much money         at the box office is beyond me.

The movie is supposedly based on a true story.  I did some digging and from what I can tell the only thing true about this is somebody, somewhere, owned a Dybbuk box and thought weird things happened around it.  So he sold it on eBay.  That's it, everything else is pure Hollywood.  So what is a Dybbuk box?  Well that is the new twist to this film.  A Dybbuk box is a wine cabinet which is said to be haunted by a Dybbuk, a Jewish demon.  So we get a break from traditional Catholic exorcism films and get to watch a Jewish one instead.

So let's talk story.  Em (Calis), talks her father (Morgan) in to buying an antique box at a yard sale, despite the creepy lady screaming "NO" at her from her bedroom window.  She gets it home, opens it and releases the Dybbuk, which apparently makes her super hungry and lets her spit demon moths from her mouth.  From there it terrorizes everyone, the father figures it out, no one believes him, so on and so on.  We get it, it happens in every horror film.

The one redeeming thing in this film is the acting.  Natasha Calis is superb as Em, and Jeffery Dean Morgan is very believable as the desperate loving father.  Unfortunately that is where the praise ends for me.

While this film did enough to keep me from turning it off, that is about all it did.  I have seen this all before and could figure out what was going to happen before it did.  The ending on the other hand..... we won't talk about that, I'll let you decide.

I give "The Possession" 1.5 demon moths out of 5:

Check Out The Trailer: