Possessor reminds me of an ultra-violent combination of Inception and Looper.
It's about an assassin who uses body-hoping technology to kill her targets before terminating the body she's co-opted.
The movie does not do a lot of explaining, we open up with an assassination in a swanky hotel where one of the staff is manipulated to kill a guest before security guards gun her down.
Then we see the protagonist (I use the word loosely) Taysa Vos, played by Andrea Riseborough, was controlling the body of the killer from a safe distance. Vos works for a secretive company that offers these kind of closed-loop assassinations. Side bar: Taysa Vos sounds like it could be a name from the Star Wars universe, or is it just me?
The process of changing bodies seems to take away from her sense of self. She takes a test after each job where she recognizes objects from her past and identifies the one that doesn't belong. When she visits her family, she has to practice sounding like herself -- as if she's rehearsing lines.
What follows is a kaleidoscope of violence and surreal, dreamy imagery filmed in a cold, deliberate style. Lots of indie movies today go for this kind of neon/midnight movie mixed with Kubrick aesthetic, but Possessor pulls it off better than most.
Vos is supposed to possess the body of Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott) to murder his girlfriend and her CEO father (Sean Bean) before offing himself to tie up the loose end.
It goes wrong, but not in the way I expected. I'd recommend this to people who enjoy mindbenders along the lines of Primer, Triangle, or Upstream Color and can put up with a bit of seize-in-your-seat gore.
It's about an assassin who uses body-hoping technology to kill her targets before terminating the body she's co-opted.
The movie does not do a lot of explaining, we open up with an assassination in a swanky hotel where one of the staff is manipulated to kill a guest before security guards gun her down.
Then we see the protagonist (I use the word loosely) Taysa Vos, played by Andrea Riseborough, was controlling the body of the killer from a safe distance. Vos works for a secretive company that offers these kind of closed-loop assassinations. Side bar: Taysa Vos sounds like it could be a name from the Star Wars universe, or is it just me?
The process of changing bodies seems to take away from her sense of self. She takes a test after each job where she recognizes objects from her past and identifies the one that doesn't belong. When she visits her family, she has to practice sounding like herself -- as if she's rehearsing lines.
What follows is a kaleidoscope of violence and surreal, dreamy imagery filmed in a cold, deliberate style. Lots of indie movies today go for this kind of neon/midnight movie mixed with Kubrick aesthetic, but Possessor pulls it off better than most.
Vos is supposed to possess the body of Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott) to murder his girlfriend and her CEO father (Sean Bean) before offing himself to tie up the loose end.
It goes wrong, but not in the way I expected. I'd recommend this to people who enjoy mindbenders along the lines of Primer, Triangle, or Upstream Color and can put up with a bit of seize-in-your-seat gore.